A Foreigner's Guide to Polish Animation

jan_lenica_labirynt_kadr.jpg, small, Still from Jan Lenica's 'Labyrinth', photo: Studio Miniatur Filmowych, A Foreigner's Guide to Polish Animation

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Poets of imagery and comedians, puppet and stop motion masters, illustrators and experts of 3D technology – Poland boasts an impressive array of well-respected and accomplished animators. Here is Culture.pl's (short) guide to Polish animation.

The Polish school of animation quickly spread to different continents after World War II. Creators like Lenica, Borowczyk, Szczechura, Kucia, Giersz, Rybczyński and Dumała won prestigious awards at world festivals and brought Polish animation into the spotlight. An important and faithful group of animated fans started to follow Polish animation. The genre became a Polish cultural ambassador, a role previously reserved for the Polish Film School, Grotowski's theatre work, and the Polish School of Posters.

_{Pre-World War II | Władysław Starewicz – puppet master | Franciszka & Stefan Themerson - pioneers of avant-garde |}

_{1950s – escaping social realism | Zenon Wasilewski – animation re-animated | Walerian Borowczyk & Jan Lenica – masters of animation |}

_{1960s – the Golden Age of Polish animation | Witold Giersz – colours | Mirosław Kijowicz – philosopher of moving images | Daniel Szczechura – the Mrożek of animation | Stefan Schabenbeck – everything is a number |}

_{1970s – the Silver Decade | Julian Józef Antoniszczak – non-camera comedian | Ryszard Czekała – freedom needed | Jerzy Kucia – the Bresson of animation |}

_{1980s, or the end of the Golden Age | Zbigniew Rybczyński – poetry of space |}

_{Post-1989 | Piotr Dumała – Dostoevsky & Kafka animated | Marek Skrobecki – the new puppet master | Tomasz Bagińśki – child of the computer revolution}

Pre-World War II

It's hard to believe that Polish animation is only 70 years old. Before World War II, animated cinema was practically unknown in Poland and only a handful of people were active in the field. One of them was...

Władysław Starewicz – pioneer & virtuoso of stop-motion puppet films

Władysław Starewicz AKA 'The Beetle Trainer', photo: Se-ma-for Produkcja Filmowa

Władysław Starewicz (born in 1882) was the spiritual grandfather of Polish animation. An amateur entomologist, caricaturist and film-maker, Starewicz was a leading world figure in puppet animation. Despite living in the Russian Empire and later France, he called himself a Polish artist.

His first animated film was created in 1910 in Kaunas (Lithuania) – The Battle of the Stag Beetles. His initial intention was to film real animals to make a nature film but the creatures were scared off by the camera lights. Instead, he used puppet animation to create an insect battle scene.

Animated beetles also starred in his first animated puppet film – The Beautiful Lukanida (1911) and The Cameraman’s Revenge (1912). In the former they played the Greek mythological figures Helen and Paris, while in the latter the beetles were unfaithful lovers.

Starewicz's most successful works were The Ant and the Grasshopper (1912) – an adaptation of a fairytale by Ivan Krylov that, thanks to a record 140 copies, was seen by viewers all over Europe and America – and The Tale of the Fox (1930), the world’s first full-length puppet animation. His entire artistic output comes to 70 films, including a dozen or so features – a record-breaking figure at the time.

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But it's not the impressive numbers that are the most important fact about the director’s achievements. It's his fabulous sparkling cinematography allowing us to watch a comedic melodrama starring beetles, the adventures of a rat driving a car, a dog visiting an underwater world, an elephant’s flight over a town, and the vivid dreams of numerous characters.

Author

Iwona Hałgas for Culture.pl

Franciszka & Stefan Themerson – let the avant-garde begin

Franciszka Themerson, photo: courtesy of the Museum of Art in Łodz

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The year 1930 marked a breakthrough in the history of avant-garde Polish cinema. This was the year Stefan and Franciszek Themerson shot the first Polish avant garde animated film: Pharmacy. It was unique in that it made use of lighting effects instead of illustrations or objects.

Author

Marcin Giżycki, from the book 'Polish Animated Film'

Pre-World War II Polish cinematography was dominated by Stefan and Franciszka Themerson. They illustrated, wrote, and created graphic art works and films. Their creative output paved the way for Polish experimental cinema. Many of their works were educational and instructional videos, unconventional and somewhat deviant.

The Adventure of a Good Citizen (1937) is a surrealist work of the grotesque genre that ironically comments on social conformism. Calling Mr. Smith, another one of their films, is an experimental propaganda film. But their best known creation is The Eye and the Ear (1945-46), which analyses four songs that Karol Szymanowski composed to the Julian Tuwim poem Słopiewnie, is considered a monumental achievement in Polish experimental animation.

The 1950s – escaping social-realism

Zenon Wasilewski – animation reanimated

Zenon Wasilewski working on the set of 'Kotek Napłotek', photo: Fototeka Filmoteki Narodowej / www.fn.org.pl

In the post-World War II period, Zenon Wasilewski emerged as the pioneer of animated films. His film Unlucky Boxer brought him into the spotlight – a political satire on Hitler in which the dictator is a boxer who loses a fight against planet Earth and ends up a skeleton.

But Wasilewski is best remembered for the animated puppet film In the Time of King Krakus (1947). The work, the first such animated film in the history of Polish animation, is also the most important animated film of the era. It was new and original because the puppets had facial expressions, an effect achieved with plasticine-filled holes in the corners of the puppets' eyes and lips.

After that success, Wasilewski continued to make animated films for children. Due to the political censorship during the communist regime era, however, he was limited in his creativity.

Walerian Borowczyk & Jan Lenica – masters of animation

The film industry was affected by the political thaw of 1956 that came with the death of Stalin. So, by the late 1950s, political circumstances no longer held back animators from following through with their ideas and projects. The two most essential names of the period are Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica. In 1957, they made the film Once Upon a Time about an ink blot that comes to life and goes on an exciting adventure. Using a cut-out technique, the film was fully improvised and showed a new direction in Polish animation. It was disconnected from classical narrative and intended for adults.

From then on, Borowczyk and Lenica quickly became admired innovators of the Polish animation community. Their next work, House from 1958, features an Art Nouveau townhouse which became witness to different loosely-connected stories. It was awarded at the International Competition of Experimental Films in Brussels. This was when the world found out that a lot was going on in the animated film industry behind the Iron Curtain. For Borowczyk and Lenica personally, House meant two things: a ticket to the West and the end of their collaboration.

Walerian Borowczyk, Paris, 1965, photo: Władysław Sławny / Forum

They went their separate ways. Borowczyk made one more film in Poland – School. This pacifist anti-establishment work tells the story of a soldier undergoing military training. After he completed it, the artist settled and worked in France. In Paris, together with Chris Marker, he made a tribute to George Méliès called The Astronauts, a slapstick comedy using animated photography. After several years in animation, Borowczyk took a different path. He began making artistic erotic cinema. His most famous works from this period are Beast (1975) and Immoral Tales (1974).

Jan Lenica on the other hand was connected with both France and Poland. In Poland he made New Janko the Musician "a pastiche of Henryk Sienkiewicz's short story of the same name", wrote Marcin Giżycki, "its spirit is evocative of Mrożek's The Wedding in Atomice. Its style reminds of a folk art paper cutting, it showed a cosmic village of tomorrow, a fulfilled utopia."

I have always liked to move at the periphery of art, at the crossing of genres. [...] I have enjoyed [...] combining elements which were seemingly distant, if not quite foreign, blurring the borders between adjacent areas, transplanting noble qualities to "lower" genres, in other words – quiet diversion.

Lenica tried to show that social norms are coercive and institutions that restrict violence and therefore infringe the liberty of the individual. To those ends he used surrealism, the grotesque, and motifs from Ionesco and Kafka. In the beginning he drew upon the cut-out technique but later moved on to features, cartoons and a mix of these techniques and animated photography. His films Labyrinth, Rhinoceros and King Ubu made him famous in Europe and the world.

Critic Marcin Giżycki rightly pointed out that there are two periods in the history of animated films: pre- and post Jan Lenica and Walerian Borowczyk. The Polish animation industry would not be the same without their input, and they greatly influenced future generations of animators.

The 1960s – the Golden Age of Polish animation

The works of Daniel Szczechura (Conflict in 1960) and Mirosław Kijowicz (Arlekin in 1960) are a testament to the post-Lenica and Borowczyk era. In the 1960s, artists continued the masters' legacy by also addressing their films to adult audiences and challenging them intellectually and on an aesthetic level. Nevertheless, animated films for children continued to be made.

Witold Giersz – coloured reality

Still from the film 'Red & Black', directed by Witold Giersz, photo: Warsaw Studio Miniatur Filmowych

Witold Giersz is by far the most challenging Polish animator to describe. His artistic output is huge and he has been active since the 60s. Over the years he has employed different techniques. Giersz has authored cartoons for kids, educational films and independent artistic projects.

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Giersz started out traditionally, in the spirit of Disney, and even as a mature artist in his authorial films or series, he would sometimes return to the line drawing technique. However his fourth movie 'The Neon Epigram' already heralded the changes that were to occur in the authorial approach to animated films.

Author

Jan Strękowski for Culture.pl

In Neon Epigram, Giersz used colours for the first time. In Little Western, his next film, touted a masterpiece, he substituted ordinary drawings with soft, "spreading" patches of colour painted directly on celluloid with which he animated each frame himself. He would come back to this technique throughout the 60s. For example in Red & Black (1963) – the whimsical story of two coloured stains which turn into a bull and a bullfighter – or Ladies and Gentlemen (1964) and Horse (1967).

For many years, Giersz was the most prolific animator in Poland. And although he ceased making films in the 1990s, in 2013, following seventeen years of leave, he made a comeback. The long-awaited Signum is a reference to the Lascaux cave paintings and the film itself is a tribute to the first masters of painting. Instead of using computer technology the director went back to the fundamentals – he used natural pigments, clay and charcoal, and replaced the canvas with stones and rocks.

Mirosław Kijowicz – the philosopher of moving image

The art historian and painter Mirosław Kijowicz represented the philosophical and reflective strand of Polish animation. This is how in Polish Animation 1945-1974 critic Andrzej Kossakowski described Kijowicz's films:

They belonged to the genre of philosophical reflection. The artist observes the world around him, reflects on the fate of the ordinary, 'grey' man, and looks for philosophical generalisations [...]. Kijowicz's exceeding sorrow – even his irony – is far from humorous. His unique humour is not carefree, and his very difficult imagery forces us to think.

In the 1960s, Kijowicz made several politically involved films: Banner (1965), The Wicker Basket (1967), Smile (1968) and Frames. In the latter film, the director illustrates the reality of the Polish People's Republic and the relentless and pointless attempts of its leaders to indoctrinate the people.

His 1970s films also had a philosophical and reflective inclination. In Road (1971) he portrays human choices which can sometimes have unexpected and disproportionate consequences, while in Variants (1970) he explains the varying paths our lives can take. Kijowicz therefore beat Krzysztof Kieślowski to the punch – the latter would pick up the topic in Blind Chance.

Daniel Szczechura – the Mrożek of animation

Still from 'Journey' by Daniel Szczechura, photo: Se-Ma-For / Studio Małych Form Filmowych

Kijowicz was not the only Polish animator to reveal the drab reality of Poland during the communist regime. Daniel Szczechura reflected disapproval of political circumstances through irony.

His first film – Conflicts (1960) – was made in the cut-out technique and is a parody of censorship in Poland at the time. The director was playing a game of cat and mouse with the representatives of communist law. He would challenge the system but never overtly, only through allusions. His critical film was disguised as an animated detective film describing mundane things. The Machine (1961), co-produced with Mirosław Kijowicz was a political satire in the cut-out technique. The film ridicules industrial monumentality in the Polish People's Republic. The film A Chair is a humorous but wise story about the fight for power which is symbolised by the titular chair.

It's the satirical edge of Szczechura's early films that earned him the title of the 'Mrożek of Polish animation'. In his later works, the director was more philosophical, leaving room for reflection and the abstract. Hobby (1968) combines the cut-out and drawn animation and is a macabre tale about female possessiveness and the battle of the sexes. The Voyage (1970) on the other hand, is a milestone work in the history of Polish animation.

Stefan Schabenbeck – everything is a number

Still from Stefan Schabenbeck's "Stairs", 1968, photo: Filmoteka Narodowa / www.fototeka.fn.org.pl

Stefan Schabenbeck, author of Everything is a Number (1966), Exclamation Mark (1967) and Stairs, (1968) fits into the philosophical-reflective current of Polish animation.

The artist's contribution to Polish animation was the Pythagorean perspective. He used film to talk about human life but stressed the micro and macro perceptions. When looked at from a different angle, life appears different. The protagonists (which in Everything is a Number were inspired by the works of Saul Steinberg) appeared alongside geometric figures, numbers and shapes. His unusual films, which could always be interpreted in a number of ways, were a phenomenon in the 1960s.

Years later, Stairs would serve as inspiration for Tomasz Bagiński's The Cathedral – an award-winning and well-known animation. Stairs shows life as an arduous climb up a labyrinth of stairs. Once we reach the top, we turn into one of the steps. Schabenbeck's work has an important place in Polish animation.

The 1970s – the silver decade

Julian Józef Antoniszczak – non-camera comedian

Julian Antonisz on the set of 'Girl from a Good House' directed by Antoni Bohdziewicz, photo: Krzysztof Malkiewicz / Studio Filmowe 'Kadr' / Filmoteka Narodowa / www.fototeka.fn.org.pl

The Krakow-based Studio Miniatur Filmowych was one of the most important centres of development for Polish animation in the late 1960s. This is where Julian Józef Antoniszczak (Antonisz), film-maker, inventor, composer, and a prominent figure in Polish animation made his début. Jan Strękowski wrote:

He is a creator of animated films who is difficult to confuse with any other film-maker from the genre. Vibrating, pulsating, full of motion and the ineptitude of some plasticity that hides the fact that it is intended, his films teem with an ingenious, surprising, absurd, and illogical sense. They are grotesque and ripe with satirical commentary, full of rough sounds as the narrations are rough, read mostly by amateurs, full of mistakes and linguistic screw-ups. Antonisz's films, more than 20 years since the director's death – and about the same period since the fall of the communist regime – still arouse great audience interest. It is an audience that includes young viewers who may never have heard of the film-maker who makes the realities of communist Poland seem like a fairy tale.

Julian Antonisz, Ryszard Czekała, Jerzy Kucia and his younger brother Ryszard Antonius Antoniszczak learned from Kazimierz Urbański, thus the movement was referred to as the Kazimierz Urbański school. In the late 1960s and the early 1970s, he went his own way and developed his own ironic educational film genre. His films: As It Happens... (1970), Out of the Woods (1970), How a Sausage Dog Works (1971) and Practical Advice on How to Prolong Your Life (1974) brought him cult status.

Through non-camera techniques, Antoniszczak talked about the absurdness of real socialism. He would say that 'the pulsating land of non-camera is the sole antidote for the existing paranoid reality'. His best-known films are Sharp Involved Film (1979) and the aforementioned How a Sausage Dog Works.

Ryszard Czekała – we need freedom

Still from 'Son' by Ryszard Czekała, 1970, photo: Warsaw Studio Miniatur Filmowych

Though they both belonged to the same school of thought – the Urbański school – Czekała and Antoniszczak went different ways in their artistic work. Antoniszczak chose absurd humour while Czekała found the story-telling aspect of animated films more pertinent. Thus, his films went in the direction of documentary and feature films.

The Bird, in 1968, was his first film. The main character dreams of freedom, but the public toilet worker cannot realise his own dream so he saves up to buy a bird and frees it. Czekała revelled in poetic expressions of dreams of freedom and its substitutes. His works illustrated what most people felt at the time.

Son (1970) is one of his most popular films. It's the alluring story of a son's visit to his parents house in the countryside. It talks of unrequited love and longing, and is perhaps one of the most beautiful films in the history of Polish animation.

Just as well-known and appreciated by critics and audiences is Czekała's The Roll-Call (1970), a shocking black-and-white film about a roll-call in a concentration camp. A prisoners' revolt ends in the execution of them all, including one who had no part in this act of opposition. Czekała was the first to depict a concentration camp in an animated film.

Jerzy Kucia – The 'Bresson of animation'

Still from Jerzy Kucia's 'Reflexes', 1979, photo: Krakow Studio Filmów Animowanych

One of the best-known Polish animators on an international level, Jerzy Kucia was closely associated with Kraków, where he lectured at the Academy of Fine Arts.

He made his debut in 1972 with the film Return. In the book Polish Animated Films 1945-1974, critic Andrzej Kossakowski called the movie a poetic vision 'about loneliness'. Ostensibly, it is a simple story about a man riding a train into the past, towards his dream home. But this past is Kucia's own past, which he allows the viewer to enter. The film was a success at the prestigious Grenoble festival and brought Kucia into the limelight. Though he continues to work to this day, his most prolific period was the 1970s.

He made seven films during this period, all of which were hits. Elevator (1973) and Barrier (1977) are two moving productions which exemplify Kucia's style – he communicates with the viewer, who, through rising emotions, ends up feeling co-responsible for the film.

Another monumental work is Reflections (1979), the bitter and highly symbolic story of a battle between two insects which ends in both of them being crushed by a human. In the following decades, Kucia slowed down his rate of production but nevertheless stayed active. In 2000, he made the fantastic The Tuning of Instruments and took back his position among the best creators of animated films in Poland.

The 1980s, or the end of the Golden Age

Zbigniew Rybczyński – the poetry of space

Still from Zbigniew Rybczyński's 'Soup', photo: Se-Ma-For / Studio Małych Form Filmowych

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Unlike Kucia, who can be called the poet of emotion and time, Rybczyński created visual poetry and unusual spaces.

Author

Bogusław Zmudziński

Zbigniew Rybczyński attended an art school in Warsaw and graduated from Łódź Film School. He made his first films in the 1970s at the Warsztat Formy Filmowej. He experimented with animation. In three films – Soup (1974), Plamuz (1973) and Holiday (1976) – he broke with traditional narration and experimented with photography.

His greatest artistic success is Tango (1980), for which he received the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film. The film exhibits the plethora of social roles. In a room, a number of characters come and go. There's a boy playing football, another one exercising, there's a mother breastfeeding her child, a plumber, a dying woman and a couple which takes her place after she passes away.

After winning the Oscar, Rybczyński continued to work abroad, including in the USA and Germany. He was among the first artists to work with HD technology. Ultimately, film critics often have a tendency to hail Zbigniew Rybczyński as the contemporary Mélies:

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He belongs to the line of Mélies' descendants, the cinematic craftsmen combining extraordinary plastic imagination with an aptitude for inventing and constructing, and endowed with Benedictine patience.

Author

Marcin Giżycki in Projekt 3/4, 1987, trans. MJ

Post-1989

The political and economic transition of 1989 hit the animation industry hard. They weren't the only ones deprived of public funding – the entire film industry was crippled. Short animated films could no longer be screened as supporting material ahead of full-length features. Prominent master animators continued to create and produce but there were few developments in the field and few experimenters.

Piotr Dumała – Dostoevsky & Kafka on screen

Still from Piotr Dumała"s 'Franz Kafka', 1991, photo: Studio Miniatur Filmowych Warsaw

The 1980s were more difficult for Polish animation than the previous two decades. Nevertheless, new talents continued to emerge. Among them was Piotr Dumała.

By the time he graduated in 1982, he had made his directing début with the animated film Lycanthropy. This story of werewolves was illustrated using conventional methods. His blackly humorous cartoon Little Black Riding Hood shows the wolf being eaten by Little Red Riding Hood.

Dumała's most accomplished film from the period (or ever) is The Gentle One (1985). It's an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's short story of the same name. How did he create the effect of a table turning into a bed and a clock into a square? He used a technique he invented himself – scratching an image out of black plaster. Dumała's 11-minute-long motion picture is one of the finest film adaptations of the Russian master's prose. Dumała used the language of film and close-up shots to give Dostoevsky's grim story about mysterious and passionate people psychological credibility.

Dumała based many of his works on literature. In Walls (1987) and Freedom of the Leg (1988) he alluded to Kafka. In 1991 he created an entire film about him entitled Franz Kafka. He also returned to Dostoevsky, adapting Crime and Punishment in 2000. In an interview with Jerzy Armata, Dumała commented:

If you compared literature to a bridge over the ocean, the bridge would have two main pillars: Dostoevsky and Kafka. The other pillars would not reach the ground. Or, even if they could, they wouldn't be able to hold the construction together.

Marek Skrobecki – the new puppet master

Marek Skrobecki, photo: Cezary Pecold / SE / East News

Marek Skrobecki began his career in animation in the 1990s. He quickly became known for his unique puppet animations.

D.i.m. (1993) heralded an upcoming star of animation. The film seduces with its simplicity, depicting two lonely people who feed a bird every day. Skrobecki used characteristic life-size puppets with expressive faces. His next film, Om (1995), is the story of a prisoner who walks around in circles in a labyrinth and is murdered by his doppelgänger.

Fish (2005) is his most popular work. It's a metaphorical tale about failure and human existence, full of irony, yet without many typical elements of dark humour. The themes of loneliness from the director's earlier films acquire new meaning. Fish was made using classic techniques of stop-motion puppet animation and 3D computer techniques.

Still from Marek Skrobecki's "Danny Boy" — Still from Marek Skrobecki's 'Danny Boy'

In 2010, Skrobecki made headlines with the animated film Danny Boy, a satirical, ironic portrait of society in which almost everybody is headless. In this anonymous, headless mass, one man – the inventor Danny Boy – stands out from the crowd.

Tomasz Bagińśki – child of the computer revolution

Tomasz Bagiński, Warsaw, 28.01.2011, photo: Rafal Siderski / Sukces / Forum

While Polish animation was mostly associated with traditional forms – time-lapse photography, puppet animation, non-camera, cut-out and illustration – the permanent arrival of computer technology in the late 1990s changed the industry. Tomasz Bagiński, a self-taught draughtsman and painter, is a symbol of this new era. He made his first film, The Hunt, on a computer at the mathematics faculty of the University of Warsaw's Białystok branch where his father worked.

Still from Tomasz Bagiński's 'The Cathedral', photo: Platige Image

In his second year of university, in 1997, he started working on the film Rain which won the YoungElectronicsArts 3D graphics competition, opening the way to a job at the Platige Image post-production company. It was at Platige Image, working after hours, that he made The Cathedral, meanwhile dropping out of university in his fourth year to focus on animated films. The Cathedral (2002) received an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short Film and made Bagiński famous in the industry. Many new young people have since followed in his footsteps, including Damian Nenow, Grzegorz Jonkajtys, Marcin Pazera and Marcin Waśko.

Originally written in Polish, Nov 2014; translated by MJ, Nov 2014

_{Sources: 'Polski film animowany 1945-1974' by Andrzej Kossakowski, Warszawa 1977; 'Nie tylko Disney. Rzecz o filmie animowanym' by Marcin Giżycki, Warszawa 2000; 'Polski film animowany' by Marcin Giżycki, edited by Bogusław Zmudziński, Warszawa 2008; 'Kino końca wieku' by Andrzej Pitrus, Kraków 2000; 'Dumała' by Piotr Dumała, Gdańsk 2012; 'Śnione filmy Piotra Dumały' edited by Jerzy Armata, Kraków-Warszawa 2009}

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