Say Yes to ‘The Dress’: A Short History of Oscar-Nominated Polish Shorts

sukienka_kadr.jpg, default, Anna Dzieduszycka in Tadeusz Łysiak's 'The Dress', photo: Warsaw Film School, Say Yes to ‘The Dress’: A Short History of Oscar-Nominated Polish Shorts

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The dress will be designed by Tomasz Ossoliński – his style perfectly suits the red carpet at one of the most elegant film events in the world. Certainly the most important one: everyone in the film industry dreams of getting an invite. He’s dressed Polish stars many times before, now he will be dressing a rising star – Anna Dzieduszycka. The lead actress of Tadeusz Łysiak's Oscar-nominated film will be walking down that red carpet tonight!

Poland’s 2022 Oscar hopeful

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The cast and crew of 'The Dress': director Tadeusz Łysiak and actress Anna Dzieduszycka standing with Radosław Śmigulski, the director of the Polish Film Institute, at the Independent Spirit Awards gala, 2022, photo: Momodu Mansaray / Getty Images

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This year there was a lot of competition in the Live Action Short Film category: 145 titles qualified for the Oscar race. Among the five films which received a nomination is Tadeusz Łysiak’s The Dress – a film which was received very well by Academy members.

In order to be able to apply for a nomination at all, a film has to either be submitted in the traditional way, i.e. have its theatrical distribution in the United States, which entails considerable costs, or win an award at one of the so-called ‘qualifying festivals’. A list of these is available on the Academy's website, and the ‘Oscar’ film events include the Kraków Film Festival, the Warsaw Film Festival and the Animator festival in Poznań. Some producers or distributors of short films plan their festival trajectory in such a way that they end up on the festival programme, which can serve as a springboard to an Oscar nomination.

So far, The Dress has won big at two such events – in Atlanta and Sofia. Then began the long and intense promotional campaign, to get the film onto the so-called shortlist – only 10 titles qualify at this point. And with effort comes cost: most producers hire local PR agencies to help them, although their services often cost tens of thousands of zlotys (no one wants to give exact amounts). On top of that, there are the prices of the plane tickets and the accommodation on location – their physical presence is a very important element of the film’s promotional strategy.

Tadeusz Łysiak and Anna Dzieduszycka travelled to Los Angeles to personally convince the right people to see and choose their film, even before the nomination was announced, on 8^th February 2022. When they got the nomination, promotional efforts intensified. The makers of The Dress have been in Los Angeles since the last week of February, and for the past month they have been giving interviews, attending screenings of their film, and going to other major industry events like the Independent Spirit Awards. They are present everywhere they can talk about their film and get one or two more votes.

According to Oscar rules, all Academy members who have an ‘active and lifetime’ membership and who have seen the entire set of nominated titles can vote for short films. That's why it's so important to show your title to as many voters as possible. Łysiak and Dzieduszycka have also had the opportunity to meet other Oscar nominees – they’ve sat next to Jane Campion, Denis Villeneuve, Kenneth Branagh, Paul Thomas Anderson and Steven Spielberg.

From ‘West Side Story’ to ‘The Witcher’

Meska sprawa (A Man Thing) Short film (complete, subtitles)

Presence at these important industry events is not only about promoting your current film – it’s also an investment in the future: making a name for yourself, making sure to be seen. Sławomir Fabicki, nominated alongside Bogumił Godfrejów for A Man Thing in 2001, used his opportunity to meet with foreign agents and producers; he was also on the set of Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can with Polish cinematographer Janusz Kamiński (who happens to also be nominated this year for his work on West Side Story). The support of the Polish-American film community should not be underestimated. Over the years, other Poles in Hollywood such as Jan AP Kaczmarek, Jerzy Skolimowski, Agnieszka Holland or Krzysztof Wojciechowski, have helped hype and promote their younger compatriots.

During the Oscar campaign for A Man Thing, Fabicki was already developing the concept of his feature film debut Retrieval and, shortly after the ceremony, he received a proposal to make it in English. In the end though, he decided that the restrictions – he would not have the rights to the final cut, to choose the heads of the most important departments or the lead actor – were too great. He chose freedom and his Polish-language debut premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006.

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'Rabbit à la Berlin', directed by Bartek Konopka, photo: promotional materials

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Bartek Konopka, whose Rabbit à la Berlin was nominated in the Best Short Documentary category in 2010, was also not tempted to make an English-language debut. He recalled that during his promotional stay in Los Angeles he was looking for an American agent with no success. However, years later, when Konopka considered hiring British actors for his feature film Blood of God, his Oscar nomination made his search much easier.

How did the Rabbit hop all the way from Poland to Los Angeles anyway? After winning an award at the Krakow Film Festival, the documentary went to the prestigious Hot Docs Festival in Canada. Anna Wydra, the producer representing the film there, found out about the possibility of being nominated and worked hard to meet all the conditions to get it done. This is an important thread in the history of the Poland’s ‘Oscar shorts’, as Wydra and Konopka's success showed other filmmakers that the Academy Awards were not out of reach.

In 2010, Wydra recalled, that until then only three Polish documentaries had been in close contention for the award: Eugeniusz Cękalski's White Eagle in 1942, Marcel Łoziński's 89 mm from Europe in 1994, and Hanna Polak and Andrzej Celiński's Children from Leningrad in 2004. Last year, a pre-war film by Wanda Jakubowska, Morze (The Sea) from 1933. was also added to this list. As you can see, both the Polish Oscar future and past can surprising!

In recent years, practically every year Polish shorts either compete for a nomination or made the shortlist – Zofia Kowalewska's Close Ties, Kamila Tarabura’s Let's Go Into the Night and Maciej Kawalski’s Atlas deserve a mention here. 2014 turned out to be a record-brekaing year for Oscar history: two Polish short documentaries were nominated for an Oscar – Joanna directed by Aneta Kopacz and Our Curse by Tomasz Śliwiński; the Polish feature film Ida directed by Paweł Pawlikowski took home the Best International Feature Film award; Łukasz Żal and Ryszard Lenczewski were both up for Oscars in the Best Cinematography category; and, last but not least, Anna B. Sheppard was up for Best Costume Design.

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Still from the film 'Joanna', directed by Aneta Kopacz, 2013, photo: Wajda Studio / promotional materials

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Before all this, the Oscar buzz around this unknown, but incredibly talented, animator’s film The Cathedral was out of control. Tomasz Bagiński’s first short film was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Animated Short Film category in 2002. Today, Bagiński is a world-renowned artist and producer – he is behind The Witcher series, based on the prose of Andrzej Sapkowski, which broke records on Netflix.

There were two other Polish ‘accents’ in the Animated Shorts category in the past: Peter and the Wolf, produced by Łódź-based studios BreakThru Films and Se-Ma-For, directed by Suzie Tempelton (2006) and Madame Tutli-Putli, co-directed by Polish-born, Canadian-based Maciej Szczerbowski (2008).

The Adventures of ‘Tango’

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'Tango', directed by Zbigniew Rybczyński, 1980, photo: Se-ma-for

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The story surrounding the only Academy Award so far granted to a Polish short film – Zbigniew Rybczyński's animated Tango – is truly outrageous. And it's not only because Rybczyński stepped out for a cigarette during the gala and wasn’t let back in despite having just won an Oscar… In an interview with Culture.pl, he told us in detail how Tango, produced in 1980, made it to the red carpet in Hollywood in 1983.

Rybczyński learned about the nomination from the Viennese press – at that time, he had already been in exile in Austria for two years.

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I was surprised, because I had no idea how films were nominated for Oscars and how 'Tango' ended up in America. It was only after I received the Oscar that I found out how it happened.

Before the Oscar, ‘Tango’ had won several awards at serious film festivals (including the Grand Prix in Oberhausen and in Annecy). Apparently, Mr Rappaport, an American film distributor, was interested in such films, mainly from Eastern Europe and Asia. And when he saw 'Tango', he contacted Film Polski to buy the rights to distribute the film in North America. While this was happening, Martial Law was declared in Poland and all talks broke down. However, Mr Rappaport didn’t give up and repeatedly offered to buy the film. After almost two years of efforts (he even travelled to Warsaw), he finally managed to purchase the film rights.

After finally receiving a copy of ‘Tango’, he rented out one of the professional cinemas in Los Angeles County, where, for at least two weeks, ‘Tango’ was shown in addition to each feature film in the cinema's regular programme. At that time, this was the condition that every film (short or long) had to meet before being submitted to the Oscars.

The film earned nominations. After winning the Oscar, ‘Tango’ became Mr Rappaport’s eighth consecutive Oscar win. Other films included those directed by Milos Forman and Akira Kurosawa. And, although it is mainly Mr Rappaport to whom I owe my Oscar – I didn’t have the opportunity to meet him in person.

After some time, when I became a member of the Academy, I found out that the Academy members had some problems with ‘Tango. Firstly, it was difficult to establish in which category the film should be classified in. It wasn’t really a cartoon or puppet film like most animated films made at the time. In the end, however, thanks to ‘Tango’, it was decided that all stop-motion films belonged in the animation category. And so ‘Tango’ became an animated film.

The second problem was the date of the film's creation. The Oscars are awarded for films from the past year. ‘Tango’ was made in 1980, so it should have been submitted to the Academy in 1981. Meanwhile, it was already 1983. They decided, however, to make an exception due to the fact that Poland was under Martial Law and the country was practically closed to the outside world at the time... but this probably had to be explained to the members of the Academy by Mr Rappaport.

Rybczyński concluded his story like this:

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At that time, the Oscars were not broadcast on Polish television. Apart from short mentions in newspapers, only one longer article appeared in ‘Trybuna Ludu’ [the daily newspaper under the communist regime], in which I was slandered for the first time. Because I said a few words about Solidarity and Lech Wałęsa on stage while receiving the award, the article informed my compatriots that I had received the Oscar from the CIA to make a political demonstration during the award presentation.

Will The Dress be as memorable as Tango? The 94th Academy Awards ceremony will take place on the night of 27^th March (the early morning of 28^th March CET). Even if Polish filmmakers don’t come home with an Oscar, they will always have… the dress.

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