Written by Philippe Cliche for Magdalena Olszanowski’s Alternative Cinema course.

It had been a long time since you had watched a movie. A real one at least. There had certainly been ‘cinematic works’ shown in theaters throughout the last few years, but they were all nauseating with how much they rave about the state. This one was going to be different: harsh and true; real. Unfortunately, that difference was seen as unacceptable, and the screening you attended gets raided by state police. Everyone involved is arrested, and of course the film itself is stopped, confiscated, and eventually cut up, never to be viewed again.
When presented with the idea of film censorship, many people, especially Westerners, imagine something along the above lines. A singularly patriotic cultural landscape, heavy-handed aggressive repression of any work not explicitly lauding the current authorities, and arrests made left and right condemning the mere idea of individual artistic expression. While not entirely baseless, this is not necessarily a fully accurate portrayal of a state under censorship, which in reality is often far more nuanced. In this paper, I take a particular look at Poland’s cinema landscape during the late 1970s and 1980s and explore how the country’s state-controlled film industry had both negative and positive effects on filmmakers and their output. 

At the turn of the 1980s, tensions in Poland were undeniably high. The workers-union-turned-political-movement known as Solidarity was gaining in both popularity and influence, strengthening the pushback against the communist regime heading the country. This culminated in late 1981, when state authorities declared martial law in an attempt to rein in control of their citizens, citing economic struggles. Throughout the years leading up to and consisting of rule by martial law, visual art held a particular importance, most evidently as a tool for propaganda for the Communist Party, but also to galvanize and spread the dissidents’ messaging thanks to its ability to use implicit imagery and themes to make an argument instead of explicit, easily censored words. The communist state was well aware of this, and as early as the 1940s had systems in place to ensure dangerous works of various kinds did not reach the public, the main censorship office being known as the Central Office for the Control of the Press, Publications, and Performances (acronymized in Polish to GUKPPiW), with the “Press” part being dropped from its name in 1980.

In an interview with the magazine Cineaste, Andrzej Wajda, one of the most prolific filmmakers of Poland’s communist years, details the specifics of the censorship process. All aspects of a prospective film were put into question at some point in the process. From the title to the screenplay to the budget to even the finalized scenes, everything was subject to change according to the whims of the party (Krakus). This meant that the large majority of approved films spoke positively of the regime, often trying to evoke a sense of pride, to get on the censors’ good side. It is in this context that Wajda’s Film Unit X submitted Interrogation for release. The film tells the story of Tonia, a stage performer who is imprisoned against her will and tortured to confess to nebulous crimes she did not commit. The film is set in the 50s, when such knowingly wrongful imprisonments were indeed conducted by pro-communist officers throughout Poland. The film very bluntly shows the kind of horrible abuse such prisoners were subjected to, while weaving in a narrative about hope and resistance against this immoral system (Bugajski). Completed in 1982, it was submitted for approval mere months after the imposition of martial law. In the (to speak subjectively for a moment—fascinating) transcript of the advisory board’s meeting on whether or not the movie should be released, myriad aspects of the film are hotly debated between members on both sides of the political divide in order to best inform the council’s decision. The meeting included deliberation about the film’s artistic strength, its creative intent, the choice of actors, the accuracy of the kind of events depicted, the time of release, and even the director’s skill. (Warman). Interrogation‘s first official screening was at Cannes… in 1989. The film was ultimately “shelved” by the councillor in spite of its agreed-upon artistic prowess because it showed images that risked further escalating tensions by galvanizing dissidents and educating younger citizens with supposedly improper context. Having foreseen this, its director, Ryszard Bugajski, had actually organized for a few counterfeit recordings of the film to be secretly circulated, leading to scenes not unlike those alluded to in the introduction, though the original print was not recuperated until 1989. This film demonstrates Poland’s enactment of the more well-known aspects of censorship. From attempting to limit public opinion to a narrow scope of thought, to trying to reframe history for their own benefit, to putting politics above everything else, traditional classic oppressive censorship was undoubtedly well and alive in communist Poland.

However, to end our analysis of Poland’s state control of film here would be disingenuous. Despite the myriad negative aspects to it, both self-evident and covered above, certain unique positive aspects do shine through as well. Of particular note in this system is the one large benefit artists were granted in exchange for their cooperation with censors: the ever-important funding necessary to see their endeavors through. To the Polish state, whose film production was entirely publicly funded, films in production were seen as investments into the country’s culture and politics and its recognition abroad. This unique attitude towards film can be in part traced back to Lenin’s belief that cinema was the most important of the arts. As Anna Misiak put it, “In a manner that recalled Lenin’s declaration of cinema’s primacy among the arts, the Polish government made every effort to stimulate film, albeit in ways that benefitted the Party. As long as films followed the unwritten rule of not opposing the system in a direct way, the communist government provided a safety net, even when Polish cinema was unsustainable” (Misiak 79). Effectively, instead of creating a film for an audience of volatile paying consumers as you would in a capitalist system, films in this era were guaranteed not only sufficient funding but also an audience, so long as they met the ruling party’s rather heavy-handed requirements. This scheme meant that shorter, more conceptual works, works with a more niche appeal, or those whose creators did not have the means to fully realize them now had a surprisingly reliable avenue for funding.  Among these films were slow-to-produce animated shorts, such as, for example, Zbigniew Rybczyński’s Tango, which was released in 1981 in the most outstanding example of an investment into culture paying off, as the film would go on to accrue international acclaim and win an Oscar. Animation was also the means through which you could get closest to releasing a film with something that resembled an anti-communist political message, as Kinoteka’s artistic director Marlena Lukasiak puts it: “[Animation techniques] were the tools we had to be able to tell completely different stories. They could express things that could not be expressed in a very direct way because of censorship and politics in Poland” (Gosling). Spoken word and the classically Polish documentary style of movie were far easier to objectively read and often far more explicit in their messaging. Evidence of the importance and value of this system can be found in filmmakers’ reaction to its disappearance. On top of the life-altering change in the economic model that occurred at the end of the 80s as the Soviet Union collapsed, screenwriters found themselves bereft of their biggest supporter. As Maria Kornatowska writes in Cinéaste, “Censorship indeed disappeared, but the rule of the market and the producer appeared. Advantageous for many reasons, coproductions are a source of constant pressure. Specifically, Polish, or ‘difficult’ topics are excluded. One must look for ‘safe’ topics. A new conformism is being born. This situation is frustrating for the filmmakers, especially those of the older and middle generations (Kornatowska 48-49).

Four increasingly complex frames from Tango (Rybczyński, 1981)

To conclude, there is a fascinating amount of nuance in the way the Soviet Union treated— that is to say, both censored and funded— Polish cinema. This dynamic led to both a narrowing of subject matter and themes as perhaps expected of any censoring regime but also kept an industry of talented producers creating culturally valuable and artistically deep works alive in a clear recognition of the value of cinema, mainstream or otherwise. This model of funding is unique to socialist and/or communist states, often tending to go hand in hand with censorship, the two serving as twin sides of the same coin. In the cases of the roughly 30 movies released every year in this time in Poland, though, this was an incredible boon, the state readily funding works that would otherwise have been unlikely to gain traction. With how expensive and inaccessible mainstream cinema productions have become nowadays, it is important to remind ourselves of the value of independent, experimental, or personal works, being their ability to push boundaries not only artistically, but also culturally and intellectually. Finally, in this light, we must keep in mind that in the absence of a selectively benevolent, biased state, it falls to us to encourage and support such endeavors in others.

works cited

Bugajski, Ryszard. “Przesłuchanie” (Interrogation). December 13, 1989. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024. https://youtu.be/gSn8IqEMBEQ?si=SX-5fvRWxoEu1qxu 

“Experimental Cinema in the Postwar Era, 1945–Mid-1960s”. Experimental and Avant-Garde Cinema, Accessed 12 Nov. 2024. https://moodle.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/pluginfile.php/
1786183/mod_resource/content/2/Experimental%20and%20Avant-Garde%20Cinema.pdf

Gosling, Emily. “Polish Animation Transformed the Discipline through Cut-Outs + Creative Solutions to Censorship.” AIGA Eye on Design, 27 May 2017, Accessed 26 Nov. 2024. https://www.eyeondesign.aiga.org/polish-animation-transformed-the-discipline-through-cut-outs-creative-solutions-to-censorship/. 

Kornatowska, Maria. “POLISH CINEMA”. Cinéaste, 1993, Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 47-50. Accessed 1 Dec. 2024. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41687244 

Krakus, Anna et al. “The Abuses, and Uses, of Film Censorship: An Interview with Andrzej Wajda”. Cinéaste, Summer 2014, Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 3-9. Accessed 30 Nov. 2024.  https://www.jstor.org/stable/43500682

Misiak, Anna. “The Polish Film Industry under Communist Control. Conceptions and Misconceptions of Censorship.” Iluminace, Vol. 24, Issue 4, pp.61-83. 2012, Accessed 28 Nov. 2024. https://www.iluminace.cz/pdfs/ilu/2012/04/04.pdf Warman, Jerzy. “The Interrogation Interrogated: The Fate of a Polish Film.” The New Criterion, 1 Oct. 1982, Accessed 1 Dec. 2024. https://www.secondrundvd.com/images/pdf/
new_criterion_co-lauda.pdf