The anniversary of 1968 provides an opportunity to revisit its unique intersection of revolutiona... more The anniversary of 1968 provides an opportunity to revisit its unique intersection of revolutionary politics and collective creativity, in which cinema was caught up as never before—in the production of a certain political affect, global in its scope. This dissertation pursues what followed in its wake, using the case of People’s Poland, which saw an unprecedented labour struggle in the region just as things had begun to dissipate elsewhere—from the mid-1970s on—culminating in one of the largest social movements in human history, in 1980, the independent and free trade union Solidarnośc (Solidarity). In recuperating these years, we locate a corresponding, alternative history for Polish political aesthetics and radical cinema practice after 1968, using a combination of historical documentation, close reading, and theoretical intervention. Like the politics of 1968, and the horizontal organizing of Solidarity, these films put pressure on existing categories of “the political,”locating it in an aesthetics of participation and the spirit of research, in which viewers play a large part in constructing meaning, rather than it being a function of a self-contained “political text.” Much of this grows out of the strong documentary tradition in Polish cinema, which the film artists under discussion then subvert, pushing beyond its limits. We see how, in different ways, contemporaries Grzegorz Królikiewicz (Ch. 1) and Krzysztof Kielowski (Ch. 2 and 3) call into question this tradition—the former using an avant-garde/film-theoretical approach, and the latter developing an immanent critique of the capacity of cinema to represent (i.e., speak for) political reality. Piotr Szulkin (Ch. 4) adds to these a haptic, affective element that explicitly theorizes labour as the subject of cinema. Finally, Andrzej Zulawski (Ch. 5) pushes these haptic, affective, elements into the red, using a visceral approach that marries genre cinema and historical embodiment, drawing on the traditions of Polish Romanticism and utopianism. In sum, these films use viewer participation to forge an embodied, affective, negativizing cinema aesthetic able to encompass a wider array of human experience than that circumscribed by Party politics or the (male) discourse of the intellectual opposition. This we call "radical communication."
Widok/View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture, 2021
Polish People’s Republic (PRL) in the late 1970s saw an increased alliance among, and indeed, a b... more Polish People’s Republic (PRL) in the late 1970s saw an increased alliance among, and indeed, a blending of, workers and intellectuals, young and old, women and men, actively struggling against the state. A new kind of solidarity emerged that threw off tired notions of what constituted the working class. The preeminent filmmaker of this time, Krzysztof Kieślowski, is often seen as increasingly depoliticized as he moved into fiction, but in this paper the author argues for the dialogic value of his work with respect to political organizing. Kieślowski’s documentarian sensitivity to registering Polish reality and the intimacy of human engagement with the world led him to question the prevailing mode of representing these shifts in politics and class. His feature films, in articulating failures of representation, challenge a “realism” that purported to be universal, but instead reified a certain historical anxiety in the Polish political imaginary (workers vs. intellectuals, urban elites vs. peasantry), or precisely that which was being unraveled by the praxis of the late 1970s. Further, they refuse to cordon off interests of individuals from the very state shown to be oppressing them. Here we have a filmic counterpart to the immanent praxis of workers and intellectuals that turned one of the engines of the state—the trade union—into the greatest weapon against it. The author shows how this functions, in negative terms, in Kieślowski’s first feature, Blizna/The Scar (1976), in which class solidarity is felt stylistically as aporia, and is further developed in Amator/Camera Buff (1979), which expresses the personal as political in the tension between the desire for spokój (peace and quiet) and czegoś wiecej (something more). Rather than a retreat, we should see this in correspondence with the revolutionary consciousness being inscribed in individual Poles by the collective labor action of Solidarity in 1980.
People's Poland in the 1970s is well-known for political rebellion, but the extent to which cinem... more People's Poland in the 1970s is well-known for political rebellion, but the extent to which cinema aesthetics were radicalized following the death of revisionism in 1968 is still under-explored. In this paper, I show how late filmmakers Grzegorz Królikiewicz (1939-2017) and Piotr Szulkin (1950-2018) moved beyond the limitations of documentary realism and psychologized narrative that viewed political cinema as constituting a settled kind of knowledge to be transmitted to audiences. Instead, their early avant-docs embraced contingency in meaning and the viewer's role in assembling it, forging an embodied, theoretical, micro style of cinematic communication. Articulating alienation in People's Poland through the marginal and un-serious, the mess of labouring bodies and human feelings, they stand the biopolitics of the state on its head, opening the door to new possibilities and new ways of being together, much like the Solidarity movement itself. I read them in terms of what Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge called the 'haptic sensorium, ' the stirrings of feeling and sensation at the beginning of life from which human labour is drawn-and our irreducible ability to fight back.
The Handbook of COURAGE: Cultural Opposition and its Heritage in Eastern Europe. Edited by Balázs Apor, Péter Apor and Sándor Horváth., 2018
Self-evident from the title, but part of the chapter, written with Mikołaj Kunicki (also ed.) and... more Self-evident from the title, but part of the chapter, written with Mikołaj Kunicki (also ed.) and Nevena Daković, "Cultural Opposition and Filmmaking in Communist East Central Europe."
critical contextual analysis of Geoffrey Jones's poetic documentary Rail, made for British Transp... more critical contextual analysis of Geoffrey Jones's poetic documentary Rail, made for British Transport Films
The anniversary of 1968 provides an opportunity to revisit its unique intersection of revolutiona... more The anniversary of 1968 provides an opportunity to revisit its unique intersection of revolutionary politics and collective creativity, in which cinema was caught up as never before—in the production of a certain political affect, global in its scope. This dissertation pursues what followed in its wake, using the case of People’s Poland, which saw an unprecedented labour struggle in the region just as things had begun to dissipate elsewhere—from the mid-1970s on—culminating in one of the largest social movements in human history, in 1980, the independent and free trade union Solidarnośc (Solidarity). In recuperating these years, we locate a corresponding, alternative history for Polish political aesthetics and radical cinema practice after 1968, using a combination of historical documentation, close reading, and theoretical intervention. Like the politics of 1968, and the horizontal organizing of Solidarity, these films put pressure on existing categories of “the political,”locating it in an aesthetics of participation and the spirit of research, in which viewers play a large part in constructing meaning, rather than it being a function of a self-contained “political text.” Much of this grows out of the strong documentary tradition in Polish cinema, which the film artists under discussion then subvert, pushing beyond its limits. We see how, in different ways, contemporaries Grzegorz Królikiewicz (Ch. 1) and Krzysztof Kielowski (Ch. 2 and 3) call into question this tradition—the former using an avant-garde/film-theoretical approach, and the latter developing an immanent critique of the capacity of cinema to represent (i.e., speak for) political reality. Piotr Szulkin (Ch. 4) adds to these a haptic, affective element that explicitly theorizes labour as the subject of cinema. Finally, Andrzej Zulawski (Ch. 5) pushes these haptic, affective, elements into the red, using a visceral approach that marries genre cinema and historical embodiment, drawing on the traditions of Polish Romanticism and utopianism. In sum, these films use viewer participation to forge an embodied, affective, negativizing cinema aesthetic able to encompass a wider array of human experience than that circumscribed by Party politics or the (male) discourse of the intellectual opposition. This we call "radical communication."
Widok/View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture, 2021
Polish People’s Republic (PRL) in the late 1970s saw an increased alliance among, and indeed, a b... more Polish People’s Republic (PRL) in the late 1970s saw an increased alliance among, and indeed, a blending of, workers and intellectuals, young and old, women and men, actively struggling against the state. A new kind of solidarity emerged that threw off tired notions of what constituted the working class. The preeminent filmmaker of this time, Krzysztof Kieślowski, is often seen as increasingly depoliticized as he moved into fiction, but in this paper the author argues for the dialogic value of his work with respect to political organizing. Kieślowski’s documentarian sensitivity to registering Polish reality and the intimacy of human engagement with the world led him to question the prevailing mode of representing these shifts in politics and class. His feature films, in articulating failures of representation, challenge a “realism” that purported to be universal, but instead reified a certain historical anxiety in the Polish political imaginary (workers vs. intellectuals, urban elites vs. peasantry), or precisely that which was being unraveled by the praxis of the late 1970s. Further, they refuse to cordon off interests of individuals from the very state shown to be oppressing them. Here we have a filmic counterpart to the immanent praxis of workers and intellectuals that turned one of the engines of the state—the trade union—into the greatest weapon against it. The author shows how this functions, in negative terms, in Kieślowski’s first feature, Blizna/The Scar (1976), in which class solidarity is felt stylistically as aporia, and is further developed in Amator/Camera Buff (1979), which expresses the personal as political in the tension between the desire for spokój (peace and quiet) and czegoś wiecej (something more). Rather than a retreat, we should see this in correspondence with the revolutionary consciousness being inscribed in individual Poles by the collective labor action of Solidarity in 1980.
People's Poland in the 1970s is well-known for political rebellion, but the extent to which cinem... more People's Poland in the 1970s is well-known for political rebellion, but the extent to which cinema aesthetics were radicalized following the death of revisionism in 1968 is still under-explored. In this paper, I show how late filmmakers Grzegorz Królikiewicz (1939-2017) and Piotr Szulkin (1950-2018) moved beyond the limitations of documentary realism and psychologized narrative that viewed political cinema as constituting a settled kind of knowledge to be transmitted to audiences. Instead, their early avant-docs embraced contingency in meaning and the viewer's role in assembling it, forging an embodied, theoretical, micro style of cinematic communication. Articulating alienation in People's Poland through the marginal and un-serious, the mess of labouring bodies and human feelings, they stand the biopolitics of the state on its head, opening the door to new possibilities and new ways of being together, much like the Solidarity movement itself. I read them in terms of what Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge called the 'haptic sensorium, ' the stirrings of feeling and sensation at the beginning of life from which human labour is drawn-and our irreducible ability to fight back.
The Handbook of COURAGE: Cultural Opposition and its Heritage in Eastern Europe. Edited by Balázs Apor, Péter Apor and Sándor Horváth., 2018
Self-evident from the title, but part of the chapter, written with Mikołaj Kunicki (also ed.) and... more Self-evident from the title, but part of the chapter, written with Mikołaj Kunicki (also ed.) and Nevena Daković, "Cultural Opposition and Filmmaking in Communist East Central Europe."
critical contextual analysis of Geoffrey Jones's poetic documentary Rail, made for British Transp... more critical contextual analysis of Geoffrey Jones's poetic documentary Rail, made for British Transport Films
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The Version of Record of this manuscript was published in Studies in Eastern European Cinema in October 2019 and is available at: www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/2040350X.2019.1677066
The Version of Record of this manuscript was published in Studies in Eastern European Cinema in October 2019 and is available at: www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/2040350X.2019.1677066