The cinema in Poland has a very long history and a very rich one too. Diving into the world of Poland’s Cinema will give you immense joy and will bring you closer to understanding the culture of Poland. Many gems of writers, directors, and actors have emerged from Polish Cinema. And in this article, we are going to dig a little deeper into Poland’s culture through the lens of cinema.
Poland’s cinema can be bifurcated into two periods which are the Pre-World War Two and Post-World War Two. The cinema post world war 2 was hugely affected by the Nazis not giving full creative access to the filmmakers and in turn banning most of the cinemas. Poland’s history of cinema is as long as the history of cinematography itself. Debatably Kazimierz Proszynski who had filmed various short films and documentaries in Warsaw has patented his pleograph film camera before Lumiere Brothers. During the world war, I especially the cinema of Poland crossed vast borders and often was rebranded with German-language intertitles and was screened in Berlin. But things drastically changed after World war two when Nazism was rampant in Poland, it saw the banning of most of the creative works that showed Germans with their Nazi cruelty. Anything anti-communist was put under the rugs. So much so that the output of films being produced was lowered to only thirteen features being released between 1947 and 1952. But as Polish filmmakers had access to all Polish institutions and an entry to almost every aspect of polish life brought forth the best and most authentic polish cinema from all strata of their lives. Even though there were high costs to film production leading to films being shot at much lower shooting ratios.
The success of polish cinema can be measured by this when the first film was produced post world war two was seen by 10.8 million people out of the total Polish population of 23.8 million. T, wMany legendary filmmakers,kers madeuntilmade untilaw a change from communism to capitalism. One such filmmaker was Wanda Jakubowska who directed The Last Stage in 1948 and Aleksander Ford who directed Border Street in 1949. Later through the mid-1950s after the end of Stalinism in Poland, the country saw film production happening into film groups. A film group consisting of Scriptwriters, film directors, and production managers came together under one senior and experienced film director to exercise their artistic expression of Cinema.
Polish Cinema invested a lot in educating the audience and building them for the kind of variety of cinema that was produced. This was done by making tickets cheap and discounts were f=given to students and old people. At one point in the 1970s in Lodz, there was 36 cinema showing films from all over the world with polish subtitles. Some of the most notable films are The Pianist, Squint Your Eyes, The wedding, The Collector, Savior Square, Rose,33 Scenes from life, Essential Killing, and the most recent Cold war of 2019.
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