'Po-lin' is Hebrew for Poland. Its etymological meaning - 'you will stay here' - could seem prophetic; Jews settled on Polish land from the 13th century, before 1939 their population was estimated at 3.5 million - the biggest Jewish community in Europe. After World War II and the Nazi occupation, and then the purges of March 1968, only a handful remained. It is hard to erase this several-century symbiosis, if only due to the contribution of Jews to Polish culture, and it makes collecting any material evidence that much worthwhile.
In the mid-1990s the Shalom Foundation appealed for photographs of Polish Jews. Some of the pictures were later published in the book I ciągle widzę ich twarze / And I Still See Their Faces. Dylewska's film continues that project: its material is amateur films discovered in archives. Thanks to them, the Jewish faces from the book have come to life, a world constantly present in the Poles' awareness, though essentially unknown to them, has returned. Or has it?
Images recorded many years ago are confronted with the present. Dylewska goes to the same places with her camera to seek out witnesses to that world's existence. Interviews with them bring to light slivers of memory while illustrating the old - and in a way the current - attitude of Poles towards Jews. It's characteristic that though the Jewish community treated Poland as their own country, their own place on Earth where they could follow their own lifestyle, not all Polish people were able to accept this otherness. However, Dylewska doesn't delve into old conflicts. She focuses on the lives of Polish Jews and their outlook on the world.
The film excerpts she has chosen, notes Piotr Śmiałowski in Kino magazine (No. 10/2008), illustrate almost every element of those people's lives, from fetching water, through preparations for and celebration of holidays, to experiencing the deaths of near and dear. The director hasn't edited these amateur films in any simple way. ... The old tapes are played back in slight slow-motion. The added sounds are correlated to some extent with what you see on screen. However, they don't sound ordinary. There is a slight echo effect, and some distortion, too. From off screen, Piotr Fronczewski in a very calm voice reads excerpts from the 'Books of Memory' written by Jews who survived. This special commentary is also linked to the events you see in the film. All the elements together create the impression that you are listening to some kind of fable, and the picture becomes something we might imagine at that moment if our eyes were closed.
I haven't reinvented the wheel, Jolanta Dylewska told the www.stopklatka.pl portal's journalist. Some of these films were already familiar to a small audience, some were used in other films. The fragments used the most often were mostly the technically good ones. The films from Kałuszyn were shot at a speed of 6 frames per second, they flickered rapidly and had to be stabilized. Some of the tapes were damaged, faded, or with too high contrast. Their technical condition was discouraging. But at the forefront there was one thing which aroused my opposition: these films were used in an extremely illustrative way, mainly when the topic was the Holocaust. There's injustice in the fact that every time you mention a 'Polish Jew', what immediately seems to come to mind are shots of such fatigued, degraded people. These are most often shots taken by Nazis. We seldom remember that the Holocaust was a matter of months, whereas the co-existence of Poles and Jews lasted several hundred years. This is where the huge injustice lies: Jews keep being associated with someone utterly degraded. I sensed a chance for reparation in my work on 'Po-lin'.
Among other awards, Jolanta Dylewska's film won the Golden Teeth Award at the Polish Film Festival in Chicago, a Golden Reel award from the critics' section of the Polish Filmmakers' Association, and a Golden Phoenix at the Jewish Motifs International Film Festival in Warsaw.
- Po-lin. Okruchy pamięci / Po-lin. Slivers of Memory, Poland/Germany 2008. Scriptwriter and director: Jolanta Dylewska, cinematography: Józef Romasz, Jolanta Dylewska, music: Michał Lorenc, sound: Artur Kapala, Piotr Nestrerowicz, editing: Paweł Suchta, Ewa Różewicz, Ingeborg Marszałek, narrators: Hanna Schygulla (German version), Piotr Fronczewski (Polish version). Production: Bomedia - a jour film, co-financed by: Polish Film Institute, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg GmbH, Der Beauftragte der Bundesregierung fur Kultur und Median, distribution: Fundacja Film Polski. Length: 82 min. Released on 7 November 2008.
Author: Konrad J. Zarębski, June 2009
Awards:
- Golden Teeth Award at the Polish Film Festival in Chicago; Golden Reel award from the critics' section of the Polish Filmmakers' Association; Golden Phoenix at the Jewish Motifs International Film Festival in Warsaw.