Marek Haltof

First published in 2002, Marek Haltof’s seminal volume was the first comprehensive English-language study of Polish cinema, providing a much-needed survey of one of Europe’s most distinguished—yet unjustly neglected—film cultures. Since then, seismic changes have reshaped Polish society, European politics, and the global film industry. This thoroughly revised and updated edition takes stock of these dramatic shifts to provide an essential account of Polish cinema from the nineteenth century to today, covering such renowned figures as Kieślowski, Skolimowski, and Wajda along with vastly expanded coverage of documentaries, animation, and television, all set against the backdrop of an ever-more transnational film culture.

A History

Polish Cinema

Janina Falkowska

The New Polish Cinema

In 1902, scientist and inventor Kazimierz Proszynski made the first Polish narrative film, The Return of a Merry Fellow (Powrot Birbanta). Since then, the Polish film industry has produced a diverse body of work, ranging from patriotic melodramas and epic adaptations of the national literary canon to Yiddish cinema and films portraying the corrupted side of communism. Poland has produced several internationally known films, including Andrzej Wajda's war trilogy, A Generation (1955), Kanal (1957), and Ashes and Diamonds (1958), Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water (1962), and Andrzej Munk's The Passenger (1963). Often performing specific political and cultural duties for their nation, Polish filmmakers were well aware of their role as educators, entertainers, social activists, and political leaders. The Historical Dictionary of Polish Cinema fills the gap in film scholarship, presenting an extensive factual survey of Polish film. Through its chronology, introductory essay, appendixes, bibliography, and cross-referenced dictionary entries on films, directors, actors, producers, and film institutions, a balanced picture of the richness of Polish cinema is presented. Readers with professional interest in cinema will welcome this new work, which would be useful for any senior undergraduate or post-graduate courses in film studies."

Historical Dictionary of Polish Cinema

During World War II Poland lost more than six million people, including about three million Polish Jews who perished in the ghettos and extermination camps built by Nazi Germany in occupied Polish territories. This book is the first to address the representation of the Holocaust in Polish film and does so through a detailed treatment of several films, which the author frames in relation to the political, ideological, and cultural contexts of the times in which they were created. Following the chronological development of Polish Holocaust films, the book begins with two early classics: Wanda Jakubowska's The Last Stage (1948) and Aleksander Ford's Border Street (1949), and next explores the Polish School period, represented by Andrzej Wajda's A Generation (1955) and Andrzej Munk's The Passenger (1963). Between 1965 and 1980 there was an "organized silence" regarding sensitive Polish-Jewish relations resulting in only a few relevant films until the return of democracy in 1989 when an increasing number were made, among them Krzysztof Kieślowski's Decalogue 8 (1988), Andrzej Wajda's Korczak (1990), Jan Jakub Kolski's Keep Away from the Window (2000), and Roman Polański's The Pianist (2002). An important contribution to film studies, this book has wider relevance in addressing the issue of Poland's national memory.

Politics and Memory

Polish Film and the Holocaust

Through a chronology; an introductory essay; appendixes, a bibliography; and over 300 cross-referenced dictionary entries on films, directors, actors, producers, and film institutions, a balanced picture of the richness of Polish cinema is presented.

Winner of The 2019 Waclaw Lednicki Humanities Award Screening Auschwitz examines the classic Polish Holocaust film The Last Stage (Ostatni etap), directed by the Auschwitz survivor Wanda Jakubowska (1907–1998). Released in 1948, The Last Stage was a pioneering work and the first narrative film to portray the Nazi concentration and extermination camp complex of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Marek Haltof’s fascinating book offers English-speaking readers a wealth of new materials, mostly from original Polish sources obtained through extensive archival research. With its powerful dramatization of the camp experience, The Last Stage established several quasi-documentary themes easily discernible in later film narratives of the Shoah: dark, realistic images of the camp, a passionate moral appeal, and clear divisions between victims and perpetrators. Jakubowska’s film introduced images that are now archetypal—for example, morning and evening roll calls on the Appelplatz, the arrival of transport trains at Birkenau, the separation of families upon arrival, and tracking shots over the belongings left behind by those who were gassed. These and other images are taken up by a number of subsequent American films, including George Stevens’s The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), Alan Pakula’s Sophie’s Choice (1982), and Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993). Haltof discusses the unusual circumstances that surrounded the film's production on location at Auschwitz-Birkenau and summarizes critical debates surrounding the film’s release. The book offers much of interest to film historians and readers interested in the Holocaust.

Wanda Jakubowska's The Last Stage and the Politics of Commemoration

Screening Auschwitz

During the course of his twenty-odd-year filmmaking career, Peter Weir has accomplished what so many of his protagonists have failed to do: he has become an accepted, integral part of an unfamiliar culture. At the core of most of his films and at the least peripheral to all of them is the idea of the outsider trying - and ultimately failing - to come to terms with a culture vastly different from his own. Weir, a native of Australia whose name was synonymous with Australian cinema in the 1970s, turned to American filmmaking in the 1980s and never looked back. In Peter Weir: When Cultures Collide, Marek Haltof traces Weir's journey from intensely Australian filmmaker to successful Hollywood director, along the way finding surprisingly consistent evidence of Weir's thematic and visual interests despite dramatic changes in his choices of story and locale.

When Cultures Collide

Peter Weir

Since his death in 1996, Krzysztof Kieslowski has remained the best-known contemporary Polish filmmaker and one of the most popular and respected European directors, internationally renowned for his ambitious Decalogue and Three Colors trilogy. In this new addition to the Directors'Cuts series, Marek Haltof provides a comprehensive study of Kieslowski's cinema, discussing industrial practices in Poland and stressing that the director did not fit the traditional image of a "great" East-Central European auteur. He draws a fascinating portrait of the stridently independent director's work, noting that Kieslowski was not afraid to express unpopular views in film or in life. Haltof also shows how the director's work remains unique in the context of Polish documentary and narrative cinema.

Variations on Destiny and Chance

The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieślowski

In the years since World War 2, Poland has developed one of Europe's most distinguished film cultures. This is a comprehensive study of Polish cinema from the end of the 19th century to the present.

Marek Haltof

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