Rewriting the Memory of the Polish People's Republic: Screen Biographies of Women Between Nostalgia and Critical Retro

• In Event: The Memory of the Polish People's Republic in Genre Cinema

Abstract

Biographical films, increasingly popular in 21st-century Polish cinema, serve multiple functions. Apart from their entertainment value and their role in highlighting significant and colorful figures, an especially important function is their ability to address the past. For biopics set in the Polish People's Republic (PRL), this last function is particularly meaningful.
Contemporary Polish culture, which shapes collective memory, is developing a new relationship with communist memory, balancing between historical accountability and global pop-cultural trends of retro and nostalgia. This creates an ambivalent longing for the PRL: acknowledging the system's flaws while appreciating its fashion, design, and notable figures who serve as memory landmarks. This is evident in stylized biographies of sexologist Michalina Wisłocka ("Art of Loving", 2017), actress Kalina Jędrusik ("Bo we mnie jest seks", 2021), and ecologist Simona Kossak ("Simona", 2024).
What is special about the abovementioned movies is the fact that these female figures are portrayed ahistorically. While they are placed within the daily life of the Polish People's Republic (PRL), their stories are heavily filtered through contemporary perspectives. Consequently, these ostensibly realistic biopics present the PRL in two ways: recreated through nostalgic and retro-romantic trends, while simultaneously serving as a polemical substitute space for contemporary debates that are common in media but less frequently addressed in fiction films set in the present day.

Author

• Patrycja Ewa Wlodek, U of the National Education Commission, Krakow (Poland)