Screening Auschwitz

This book about the early screen representation of Auschwitz-Birkenau deals with the classic Holocaust film made in 1948 in Poland by Auschwitz survivor, director Wanda Jakubowska. The Last Stage (or The Last Stop) is a pioneering work – the first narrative film to portray the former Nazi German camp. Haltof discusses Jakubowska’s life and career before World War II, her imprisonment during the war, the prominent role that she played in the nationalized postwar Polish cinema, and problems she faced during the script stage. The monograph also discusses the unusual circumstances that surrounded the production of the film at Auschwitz-Birkenau and summarizes critical debates surrounding its release. Screening Auschwitz is the first detailed monograph on this classic Holocaust film. The book incorporates new materials and sources obtained through extensive archival research, and examines the impact of the film on other Holocaust narratives

Transcultural engagement with Polish memory of the Holocaust while watching Leszek Wosiewicz's Kornblumenblau

Kornblumenblau (Leszek Wosiewicz 1989) is a film that explores the experience of a Polish political prisoner interned at Auschwitz I. It particularly foregrounds issues related to Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust in its diegesis. Holocaust films are often discussed in relation to representation and the cultural specificity of their production context. However, this paper suggests thinking about film and topographies, the theme of this issue, not in relation to where a work is produced but in regards to the spectatorial space. It adopts a phenomenological approach to consider how, despite Kornblumenblau's particularly Polish themes, it might address the transcultural spectator and draw attention to the broader difficulties one faces when attempting to remember the Holocaust. Influenced particularly by the writing of Jennifer M. Barker and Laura U. Marks, this paper suggests that film possesses a body ¬¬- a display of intentionality, beyond those presented within the diegesis, which engages in dialogue with the spectator. During the experience of viewing Kornblumenblau, this filmic corporeality draws attention to the difficulties of confronting the Holocaust in particularly haptic ways, as the film points to the unreliability of visual historical sources, relates abject sensations to concentrationary spaces and breaks down as it confronts the scene of the gas chamber

Grieving, Therapy, Cinema and Kieslowski's Trois Couleurs: Rouge

Cultural associations with red are potent. They include blood and intense passion, injury and death, love and life; and all these are authentic indications of Kieslowski’s themes. Yet in this film the connotations of the colour are not exclusively traditional because the heroine, a model, will have her image displayed on a gigantic scarlet billboard to promote bubble gum. The model’s glamorous, colour-saturated but transient world and the grey existence of an emotionally constipated senex come into contact. The initially hostile contact between this ill-matched pair brings them not into each other’s arms – this is no romantic comedy – but, through discovery of each other’s weaknesses and strengths, to a degree of completion (not perfection) in which conscious and unconscious are better aligned. In part they are moved by synchronicities in which the life of a young advocate begins to echo the judge’s past. Not only this factor (which extends the reach of the drama beyond the odd couple) but the ever present cultural socio-cultural background of advertising and judicial morality generalise the issues of the main protagonists across the European collective. Eventually the unforgettable calamity with which the film ends brings into focus the characteristics of the main protagonists from the entire trilogy that renders them psychologically convincing survivors

„Ciągle żywy”. Wpływ Kieślowskiego na kino polskie w czasach postkomunistycznych

The influence of Krzysztof Kieślowski on Polish post­communist cinema is discussed. The author refers to all events held in 2006 (the year of the 10th anniversary of the director’s death). He stresses Kieślowski’s influence and reflects upon his cooperation with Krzysztof Piesiewicz. Also the effect Kieślowski had on such directors as Michał Rosa, Jerzy Stuhr, Iwona Siekierzyńska, to name but a few, is indicated

Images of the Holocaust in Films of the Polish Film School (1955-1965)

Autor analizuje sposoby przedstawiania Holokaustu w polskich filmach powstałych w okresie trwania polskiej szkoły filmowej. Przywołując filmy, z których większość wciąż pozostaje w cieniu wielkiego kanonu szkoły polskiej, Haltof próbuje wpisać ukazany w nich wizerunek Zagłady zarówno w kontekst artystyczny, historyczny, jak i polityczny. Autor omawia takie filmy, jak Pokolenie i Samson Andrzeja Wajdy, Naganiacz Ewy i Czesława Petelskich, Świadectwo urodzenia Stanisława Różewicza, Biały niedźwiedź Jerzego Zarzyckiego, Pasażerka Andrzeja Munka i dwa krótkometrażowe filmy: Przy torze kolejowym Andrzeja Brzozowskiego i Ambulans Janusza Morgensterna. Analizując je, autor pisze o sposobach łączenia i rozłączania losów żydowskich i losów polskich, o tragedii dzieci skazanych na Zagładę, o postawach Polaków wobec szukających pomocy Żydów, a także o filmowych próbach znalezienia psychologicznego wymiaru relacji między prześladowanymi a prześladowcami. Tekst jest tłumaczeniem rozdziału (Images of the Holocaust during the Polish School Period /1955-1965/) z książki Marka Haltofa Polish Film and the Holocaust: Politics and Memory, Berghahn Books, New York 2012. Copyright © Marek Haltof and Berghahn Books 2012.The author analyses the ways Holocaust was presented in Polish films that were made during the existence of the Polish Film School. Using the examples of films, the majority of which remains in the shadow of the great „canon” of the Polish school, Haltof attempts to place the image of Holocaust presented in them within the artistic, historical and political context. The author analyses films such as Andrzej Wajda’s Samson, and Generation, Ewa and Czesław Petelski’s Barker, Stanisław Różewicz’s Birth Certificate, Jerzy Zarzycki’s White Bear, and Andrzej Munk’s The Passenger, as well as two short films: Andrzej Brzozowski’s By the Railway Track, and Janusz Morgenstern’s Ambulance. By analysing them, the author writes about how ways of connecting and disconnecting the Polish and Jewish fate, the tragedy of children that were victims of the Holocaust, about the attitudes of Poles towards Jews seeking help, and of the film attempts to find the psychological dimension of the relationship between the oppressed and the oppressors. The text is a translation of the chapter (Images of the Holocaust during the Polish School Period /1955-1965/) from the book Polish Film and the Holocaust: Politics and Memory by Marek Haltof, Berghahn Books, New York 2012. Copyright © Marek Haltof and Berghahn Books 2012

The casualty of Jewish-Polish polemics: Revisiting Andrzej Wajda’s Korczak 1990

OFIARA POLEMIKI POLSKO-ŻYDOWSKIEJ. POWRÓT DO KORCZAKA 1990 ANDRZEJA WAJDYTekst Marka Haltofa Ofiara polemiki polsko-żydowskiej. Powrót do „Korczaka” 1990 Andrzeja Wajdy omawia polityczny aspekt pierwszego filmu Wajdy, który powstał po transformacji ustrojowej. Wcześniej reżyser zrealizował wiele filmów poświęconych Holokaustowi i relacjom polsko-żydow-skim. Niektóre z jego dzieł spotkały się z krytyką, często niezasłużoną, stając się zakładnikami polity-ki i „ofiarami polsko-żydowskich polemik” — jak pisze o Korczaku Lawrence Baron. Artykuł przy-bliża historię powstania filmu, sposób przedstawiania postaci Korczaka jako polskiego i żydowskiego bohatera oraz kontrowersje, jakie ten film, a zwłaszcza jego finałowa scena, wzbudził we Francji.</jats:p