Polish Avant-Garde Films, 1930-1945

Background

 Film in Polish Avant-Garde Circles Between the Wars

   by Marcin Gizycki

There was no organized avant-garde film movement in Poland before WW2, which does not mean that there were no avant-garde films made.  This paradox is easily explained.  A number of artists more or less connected with avant-garde circles worked separately on films or film-related projects.  Some of them succeeded in actually producing films, some others did not manage to go beyond scripts or sketches.  Altogether, they made 8-9 films (plus a few concepts that never materialized), which is a surprising number if one considers that these artists did not receive any support from wealthy patrons, like the Noailles in France, or institutions, like the General Post Office in England.  Stefan Themerson, the most prominent of these young filmmakers, even criticized some of his colleagues for daring to complain about insufficient funding.  “Is it possible,” he asked, “that lack of money can prevent somebody from making art?  Who came first, the poet or the publisher?”[1]

            The earliest Polish avant-garde projects that have survived are two charts by Mieczyslaw Szczuka, published in the magazine “Blok,” the main vehicle for publicizing the work of avant-garde artists in the 1920s.  The first of them, “Five Moments of an Abstract Film,”[2] is a horizontal strip covered with abstract, geometrical figures.  Beneath it is a sort of timeline that indicates a division into five segments.  The chart gives us a very vague idea of the possible movements and transformations of the figures.

The second drawing, “A Few Essential Elements of an Abstract Film,”[3] represents a vertically positioned strip of film on which geometrical shapes, mostly rectangular, are grouped in different configurations.  Adjacent to the “film” are graphical representations (arrows, etc.) and descriptions of movements, e.g.: “Dynamics of forms: they diminish or grow, transform, disintegrate or build up.”

The latter of the two charts seems to be a visual catalogue of figures and their movements – one that could be the basis for making an abstract film, rather than being a storyboard for an actual film itself.  Around 1927 Szczuka began to prepare drawings and sketches for a film titled “He Killed, You Killed, I Killed.”  Unfortunately, only two drawings of what was certainly a larger set are known today.[4]  They indicate that along with some abstract elements, the film was also to contain animated text.  The tragic death of the artist the same year put an end to this project at an early stage.

The first successfully completed avant-garde film in Poland was “Pharmacy” (1930), by the writer-painter team of Stefan and Franciszka Themerson. To make it, the Themersons constructed a special animation stand that consisted of a glass plate covered with translucent paper and a camera beneath it with its lens pointing upwards.  Small objects were placed on the glass.  By lighting them from above, changing their position, and shooting frame by frame, they achieved interesting, nearly abstract moving patterns.  In 2001, American artist Bruce Checefsky made his version of the film which he modeled on existing stills and press descriptions of the lost original.  

“Europa” (1931-32), the next project by this duo, became a cult movie among film lovers in Poland before 1939.  Stefania Zahorska, the most prominent critic of the time, called it “the first good film made in Poland!”[5]  The work was inspired by a poem of the same title by Anatol Stern, a futurist poet.  In a flow of snapshots depicting different aspects of contemporary life, Stern had made a strong political statement, a warning about the existence of social tensions and the possibility of a new world war.  The Themersons followed the text closely, producing a filmic collage in which literary metaphors were represented word for picture.  Since “Europa” was silent, the result was a stream of beautiful but sometimes mysterious images.

As was the case with “Pharmacy,” the film was lost during WW2.  In 1988, a young director named Piotr Zarebski made a film titled “Europa 2,” inspired by what remained of the 1932 version.  In addition to blown up single frames of the original film and Stefan Themerson’s collages, he also used his own footage shot on the streets of Lodz.  Stern’s poem is read in voice over by an actor.

After completing “Europa,” the Themersons made two commissioned films: a commercial for a jewelry shop (“Musical Moment,” 1933) and an educational short for the Institute of Social Problems (“Short Cut,” 1935).  In both they utilized the technique of animating objects they had already used in “Pharmacy.”  The films were also destroyed during the German occupation of Warsaw.

In 1937 Stefan and Franciszka completed their last film in Poland: “The Adventure of a Good Citizen,” a surrealist burlesque that later inspired Roman Polanski’s “Two Men and a Wardrobe.”  Although it was mostly live action, they smuggled a few abstract images into the plot, some of them painted directly on the film stock.  The film is the most significant Polish avant-garde cinematic work from the 1930s to survive to the present time.

            During the war, the Themersons found themselves in London where they produced two more shorts (sponsored by the Polish Government in exile): “Calling Mr. Smith” (1943) and “The Eye and the Ear.”  The former is an anti-Nazi propaganda film whose aim was to wake up ordinary British citizens, many of whom refused to acknowledge that the nation that had delivered Bach and Goethe could have committed crimes against humanity.  Despite the message, the form of the film was innovative, contrasting shocking documentary footage with images of pure visual beauty (achieved, among other methods, through the use of color filters and hand drawn images).

            “The Eye and the Ear” (1944-45) is a collection of four visual interpretations of songs by Karol Szymanowski (music) and Julian Tuwim (lyrics), sung by Sophie Wyss.  Two of them consist of abstract moving patterns that represent the voice of the singer and orchestration.  For one of the remaining parts, the filmmakers built a glass container, filled it with water, and dropped small clay balls into this to create ripples that also reflected the progress of the musical line.  The film is one of the best, but simultaneously lesser known, examples of abstract cinema in the history of this genre.

            Apart from the Themersons, significant film experiments were conducted in Krakow by a group of avant-garde artists and poets: Janusz Maria Brzeski, Kazimierz Podsadecki, and Jalu Kurek.  None of their films survived intact, but enough material from Kurek’s “OR (Rhythmic Calculations)” (1934) was found after the war to allow it to be reconstructed.[6]  The film was an illustration of Kurek’s theoretical belief according to which one could make films without actually showing a human face.  So, for example, the story of a date between two protagonists was told mostly using shots of their legs.  Some unrelated images of factory chimneys, trees, and clocks, etc. added visual metaphors that were open to interpretation.  Poetic, animated title screens completed the whole.

            Two more experimental films of some interest exist from the period.  “There is a Ball Today” (1934) by Tadeusz Kowalski and Jerzy Zarzycki, two architectural students who were also active in the “Start” Art Film Friends Society, is a poetic reportage about an annual ball for young architects, unconventionally told and filled with interesting tricks. “Boots” (1934) by Jerzy Gabryelski is a narrative anti-war short that cleverly utilizes the possibilities of the film medium (transitions, double exposures, etc.).

            In conclusion, it is worth noting that avant-garde film activities in Poland before 1939 were not limited to actual filmmaking.  Artists, writers, poets, theatre directors, and the like produced a significant number of theoretical manifestos.  These texts, along with the above-mentioned films, represented a very special force that Stefan Themerson once referred to as “the urge to create visions.”[7]  This urge has also motivated Polish experimental cinema after WW2, as represented by the works of Jan Lenica and Walerian Borowczyk, the members of the Film Form Workshop, and Oscar winner Zbigniew Rybczynski, to name only a few artists driven by the same force.