Starring – Photos: On Polish Iconographic Films Made from Photos
Abstract
Short iconographic films made from photos constitute a separate trend of the Polish school of documentary. It has been expanding with new titles over several dozen years. Fleischer’s Album (1962) by Janusz Majewski and A Working Day of Gestapo Man Schmidt (1963) have taught Polish documentary filmmakers how to explore the possibilities of this form of film art. The two documentaries played a pivotal role in paving the way for a whole series of films based on pictures taken by the German troops and officials from World War 2, which presented the private look of the Nazis on the war and its victims. The subject matter of films made from pictures was gradually broadening. These films told the story of the Holocaust and of lack of the victims’ look on the Holocaust, embalmed in photography. Films on the Polish resistance movement were also made, with particular emphasis on the Warsaw Uprising. The turn of the 19th and 20th century became the subject of documentaries at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s. Pictures used in almost all of Kazimierz Karabasz’s films are regarded as a medium enriching the documentary with a new reality dimension that cannot be captured by the camera. His films, Summer in Żabno (1977) and Portrait in a Drop of Water (1997), show that films made from photos are perfectly suitable for depicting the present day. [originally published in Polish in Kwartalnik Filmowy 2006, no. 54-55, pp. 212-230]
Keywords:
iconographic film, photography, HolocaustReferences
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Authors
Mikołaj Jazdonkwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań Poland
Professor of Adam Mickiewicz University (Poznań), specialist in film studies; he works at the Department of Film, Television and New Media at AMU. Author of the books Dokumenty Kieślowskiego [Kieślowski’s Documentaries] (2002), Polskie kino niezależne [Polish Independent Cinema] (ed. 2005) and Kino dokumentalne Kazimierza Karabasza [The Documentary Cinema of Kazimierz Karabasz] (2009). He co-edited, with Katarzyna Mąka-Malatyńska, the collective volume Zobaczyć siebie. Polski film dokumentalny przełomu wieków [To See Oneself: Polish Documentary Film of the Turn of the Century] (2011), and, with Katarzyna Mąka-Malatyńska and Piotr Pławuszewski, the volume Pogranicza dokumentu [Frontiers of the Documentary] (2012). Author of accompanying texts for DVD editions of films in the Polish Documentary School series (“Krzysztof Kieślowski”, “Kazimierz Karabasz”, “Władysław Ślesicki”, “Czarna seria” [„The Black Series”] and “Gryczełowska, Halladin, Kamieńska”). Member of the Editorial Board of the international journal Images. Co-author of scripts for twelve episodes of the TV series “Sztuka dokumentu” [“The Art of the Documentary”]. Artistic director of the International Documentary Film Festival „Off Cinema” in Poznań.
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