Polish film history was actually written by film festivals: never reaching Cannes means never having made a film
A researcher noted that when David Bordwell wrote the history of Romanian cinema, he didn't write about it at all—not because the films were bad, but because those films were never sent to Western film festivals where he could see them.
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Art films were Eastern European countries' foreign communications budget
After the Cold War, especially in the new century, Eastern European countries' film funds faced a choice: fund commercial films, and only domestic audiences would watch; fund art films, and they could be seen by foreign scholars, critics, and international audiences, creating international circulation. Yin Xiang points out that this logic led these countries' film management institutions to consistently favor artistic works, funding many art films rather than commercial ones.
— Yin XiangInternational film festivals determined who got written into film history
Yin Xiang says that how Western scholars wrote Cold War-era film history depended heavily on what they could see at international film festivals—basically, whatever the film festivals showed, they wrote about. He gives an example: David Bordwell, a top film historian, didn't write a single word about Romanian cinema, for a simple reason: those films were never sent to Western film festivals, so Bordwell had no way to see them.
— Yin XiangPolish film style changed overnight when Stalin died in 1953
Yin Xiang found through research that before Stalin's death in 1953, Polish films were standard "land reform films": you could tell the landlord villains as soon as they appeared on screen, the visual language was completely stylized, comprehensible without subtitles. The moment Stalin died, the style changed dramatically. Kawalerowitz's subsequent works were described as "French Left Bank style, entire film with grand psychological structure"—this kind of turn would have been absolutely impossible before.
— Yin XiangMaking a warrior from an exile government the protagonist was risky at the time
The protagonist Maciek in Ashes and Diamonds was a member of the London exile Polish government's Polish Home Army, essentially a "villain" by the official political stance of the time. Yet Wajda built the entire narrative structure of the film around this character's perspective, rather than around the secretary character in the original novel. The guest believes this choice itself carried the national emotional structure Wajda never laid down in his life—the split between European Poland and Poland seized by the Soviet Union.
— Cheng YanliangMan of Iron's political influence far exceeded its artistic evaluation
Yin Xiang frankly said he didn't particularly like Man of Iron, because structurally it's almost a sequel to Man of Marble, and "negative propaganda is also a form of propaganda." But both acknowledged that this film's real-world impact might be the largest of all Polish films—there's a saying that it helped Lech Wałęsa, the real person (who also appeared in the film), go international, eventually leading to a Nobel Prize and the presidency, though this causal connection is considered exaggerated.
— Yin XiangMan of Marble exposed propaganda by comparing source material with the finished film
In Man of Marble, a student director gets the original raw materials of documentary footage used to create model workers, and discovers they're completely different from the finished film: shots of exhausted workers, muddy ground and other images were all edited out, leaving only beautiful images of engineering feats paired with music. The guest believes this is exactly where Wajda was most brilliant—not telling you who the bad guy is, but directly showing audiences how political propaganda discourse is manufactured through editing.
— Yin XiangThe lie about the Katyń massacre lasted over forty years
In spring 1940, the Soviet NKVD executed approximately 22,000 Polish officers and intellectuals in Katyń Forest, including Wajda's father. After the Nazis discovered the mass grave in 1943 and first reported it publicly, the Soviet Union turned around and insisted it was the Nazis' doing. This narrative was maintained with unified messaging throughout the Eastern Bloc during the entire Cold War, until the Gorbachev era when the Soviet Union finally admitted it was the NKVD's deed, approved by Stalin himself.
Wajda made national epics, Kieślowski made high-concept films
Yin Xiang distinguishes the two Polish directors in one sentence: Wajda dealt with national issues and big subjects—audiences immediately knew he was telling Polish history; Kieślowski made entirely "high-concept" films, like The Double Life of Véronique, which on the surface is a romantic film about two girls' mysterious connection, but actually also alludes to Eastern European upheaval, yet wraps it extremely lightly—the threshold is far lower than Wajda's films which require first taking a history lesson.
— Yin XiangIn their own words · checked verbatim
We may not have much production capacity for new films, but we have a very glorious film history, we have so many masters.
就是我们可能新片不一定有那么大的产能 但是我们有非常辉煌的电影历史 我们有这么多的大师
Yin Xiang3:07
Since I have to fund films anyway, if I fund art films, they'll get international circulation. If I fund commercial films, they won't leave the country. Who would I fund? Of course art films.
既然我都是要资助片子 我资助艺术片 它会有一个国际传播 我资助商业片都不出国 我资助谁 我当然资助艺术片
Yin Xiang10:11
What they can see—the biggest mechanism is international film festivals. Basically, whatever international film festivals show, that's what they write about.
这个里面他们能看到什么 最大的一个机制就是国际电影节 基本上国际电影节放什么 他们写什么
Yin Xiang15:12
If a country has one great director, we call them an auteur. If a country has two great directors, we can probably already call it a school. If you ask me about a country with three great directors, well, that's a New Wave.
一个国家有一个好导演 我们管他叫一个作者 一个国家有两个好导演 我们可能都可以管他叫一个学派了 如果你问我说这国家有三个好导演 那当然是新浪潮了
Yin Xiang17:12
They didn't want to make that kind of Soviet-style socialist realist propaganda film, but exactly what they became instead varied considerably. But their common denominator was: we won't make it that way.
他们不想拍那种苏联式的社会主义 现实主义式的政治宣传片 但是具体他们长成什么样 会有挺大的差别 但是他们共性就是我们不要那样拍
Yin Xiang23:15
What if there's no red flag? I see a Polish flag, tear it down the middle—half white, half red. That's what partitioning Poland looks like.
没有红旗怎么办呢 我看到一波兰国旗 我插从中间把它撕开 一半白的一半红的 这就叫瓜分波兰
Yin Xiang37:21
Because it tells of a young director during the socialist period who made a documentary to investigate a model worker created in the 1950s, a worker who was later knocked down in a historical movement and then erased from history.
因为他就讲一个社会主义时期的 一个年轻导演 他拍纪录片去追查一个50年代 被塑造出来的一个劳模 最后他又在历史运动当中又被打倒 然后从历史当中抹掉了
Cheng Yanliang51:26
Figures
| Soviet films imported | approximately 500 | 18:12 |
| Polish films imported | approximately 60-plus | 18:12 |
| Polish presidential plane crash deaths in 2010 | 96 | 1:00:31 |
Glossary
- Zespół filmowy
- A semi-autonomous group formed by artistic inclination within socialist film studios, with fixed pairings of directors, screenwriters, and cinematographers.
How to listen
Film enthusiasts and researchers interested in Eastern European Cold War cultural politics, the mechanisms of film history writing, and Polish history.
The opening pleasantries and credits to the curatorial team (0:00-2:04) can be skipped.