No End in Sight: Polish Cinema in the Late Socialist Period

280 Pages·2018·11.318 MB·English

by  Anna Krakus

NO END IN SIGHT
PITT SERIES IN RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN STUDIES
Jonathan Harris, Editor
NO END IN SIGHT
POLISH CINEMA IN THE
LATE SOCIALIST PERIOD
ANNA KRAKUS
UNIVERSITY OF
PITTSBURGH PRESS
Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260
Copyright © 2018, University of Pittsburgh Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-6461-2
Cover art: photographic still of Andrzej Łapicki in Tadeusz Konwicki’s How Far, How Near
(Jak daleko stąd, jak blisko), 1971 © Filmoteka Narodowa
Cover design: Alex Wolfe
Dla mamy i taty

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments   ix
INTRODUCTION Aesthetic Unfinalizability: Narrative Irresolution at
a Time of Great Conclusions   1
INTERLUDE Wajda’s Secret Box    30
CHAPTER 1 Final Cut: Poiesis and Production History    32
CHAPTER 2 Life Keeps Ending: Immortality and Resurrections    63
INTERLUDE Rebuilding the Capital  107
CHAPTER 3 “But It Is Our Country”: Building a Nation  110
INTERLUDE A Sweatshop Romance  149
CHAPTER 4 It’s about Time: Plots about Aimless Movement  151
POSTLUDE After Forever: Polish Cinema after “The End”  177
Notes  213
Bibliography  239
Index  255

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Once, as a child digging through my parents’ kitchen drawers, I came across
a white pin inscribed in red letters that spelled “Solidarność.” I didn’t
know what it was, but upon asking I was made to understand that it was
somehow important. The conversation didn’t go any further—politics was for
the adults—and our annual family trips to Poland brought me to no deeper re-
flection on such things either. In Poland I enjoyed playing with my cousins and
purchasing cheap cassette tapes. We ate sunflower seeds and fell off monkey
bars just like children anywhere in the West. Somehow the rationing of toilet
paper or the near empty grocery stores didn’t really register with or bother us.
Nor did the long lines of cars ahead of ours arriving on the ferry from Sweden
to Poland detract from the excitement of the trips. Even after I could see my
cousin Hania’s smiling face on the other side of the toll booths, the wait could
last for hours while the cars were searched and formerly black-listed individuals
were questioned, including my parents. The Poland of my childhood was a place
where play was fun, Jacek Kaczmarski’s songs were dull, and Solidarity Union
pins were pretty, but obscure—until my parents found it appropriate to show me
Polish films. My mother had procured a copy of Kieślowski’s Decalogue series on
ix