While there are a great deal of visual artists who utilize film in their practice, there’s a clear distinction between employment of this medium in the field of fine art and in the cinematic industry. Still, there have been just a few artists-turned-directors who made the successful leap from the gallery space to the silver screen. A phenomenon which initially must have seemed risky to Hollywood producers has undeniably won endorsement and appreciation after acclaimed British visual artist Steve McQueen received the Best Picture Academy Award for his third feature-length film, 12 Years a Slave.
In that regard, the so-called cinematic turn in Polish contemporary art follows a legitimized tendency, yet Majmurek and Ronduda bring to light telling specificities of such a shift, providing a broad context for understanding both Polish visual artists who have embarked on making feature-length films and the history of Polish cinema which, as they note, used to be highly politicized:
Feature film was something that artists avoided – a situation caused by the avant-garde's particular aversion, if not hatred, towards this medium. It was especially strong in Poland after World War II, where Pop Art never existed and Socialist Realism prevailed, a tendency that gave rise to a strong imperative for autonomy in the field of art.
However, the editors point out that:
Personal cinema flourished among Polish artists living in the Communist state, it was created in the private environment as a reaction to the hampered freedom of expression in the public sphere... it developed close to the life of the artist, it was focused on recording mundane, banal events, fantasies, masquerades, etc.
The artists continued the investigations pursued by the structural avant-garde, a movement that examined the materiality of the medium of film and highlighted the most basic elements of the medium. Majmurek and Ronduda emphasize:
The artist-filmmakers have opened Polish cinema to the most interesting currents in global filmmaking, currents hitherto ignored by our cinematographers; they revived the language of film, harnessing it for political action beyond the obvious (and hackneyed) categories of 'social cinema' and 'engaged cinema'.
Polish Cine Art consists largely of interviews with artists-turned-directors, cinematographers, editors and producers which provide the most immediate access to their thought processes and motivations and offer compelling narratives. The book, coming in at 267 pages, and illustrated with still frames, copies of original scripts, storyboards and film posters, provides an intriguing insight into the condition of Polish cinema as well as the individual characters of the artists, who despite being pioneers in the field of directing reveal considerable differences in their attitudes and methods.
In the first section of the volume the editors present the historical and institutional context of the current cinematographic turn in Polish art, taking as a point of departure Piotr Uklański’s Summer Love (2006). Not only was it the first Polish western, but also the first feature film by a visual artist, a work that can definitely be considered as ground-breaking. The introductory critical essay is followed by conversations with Józef Robakowski and Wojciech Marczewski who give a highly informative account of the history of the relationship between artists from the field of visual arts and professional cinematography (from Stefan and Franciszka Themerson , through Socialist Realism, the Workshop of the Film Form, to the cinema of moral anxiety) and on the striking differences between the Wajda School and other Polish film schools, respectively.
The second part comprises exclusively conversations with artists active in the field of cinema, with film professionals who collaborate with those artists, as well as texts that analyze the already existing fruits of such collaborations.
The list of interviewees includes Wilhelm and Anka Sasnal discussing their films Parasite and It Looks Pretty from a Distance, Zbigniew Libera speaking of Walser, Oskar Dawicki, Lukasz Ronduda talking about Performer, and Norman Leto reflecting on Photon.
The subsequent section titled Work in Progress presents the winners of the Film Award of the Polish Film Institute, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, and the Wajda School who have been selected for the course at Wajda School which culminates in producing their debut feature-length film: Anna Molska, Agnieszka Polska, Katarzyna Kozyra.
It's not just eruditely written essays that set the academic tone of the entire publication, but the very immediate insight into artists’ way of thinking about art and film which makes the volume exceptionally worthwhile.
Polish Cine Art FlipBook available here:
Polish Cine Art. The Cinematographic Turn
in Polish Contemporary Art
Edited by Jakub Majmurek
and Łukasz Ronduda
Warsaw 2015
copyright © for this edition by
Political Critique Publishing House
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
and Adam Mickiewicz Institute 2015
Issue I
ISBN 978-83- 64682-43-8
Translation: Łukasz Mojsak
Co-produced by Culture.pl
Author: GS, August 2015