Our Film Map

Rafał Marszałek

Abstract

Presentation of the book by Barbara Hollender Od Munka do Maślony [From Munk to Maślona] (2017), which is the third link in the cycle after the previously published volumes Od Wajdy do Komasy [From Wajda to Komasa] (2014) and Od Kutza do Czekaja [From Kutz to Czekaj] (2016). The seriousness of this work is not limited to documentation, and Hollender’s ambition was not to create a lexicon. Her book is a remarkable biographical reconstruction, which is based on testimonies of directors, but ultimately owes its shape to their interlocutor – the author. Barbara Hollender described the cultural changes that influenced the shape of today’s Polish cinema. She distinguished several critical points related to modern history, starting from the Polish film school, through the cinema of moral anxiety, which in the second half of the 1970s expressed her own rebellion and personal longing of a young girl she was at the time. The last of these points, especially exposed, is the political transformation after 1989. The narrative is conducted both over generational divisions and those resulting from experience or style. The protagonists of the book, even if they belong to one generation, do not create joint manifestos or implement a uniform – ideologically or aesthetically – programme. The collective portrait splits into expressive, individualized images.