Jaruzelonostalgia?: Memory of the 1980s in Polish Recent Cinema (2018–2025)

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

Abstract

In my article "Jaruzelonostalgia? The Image of the Eighties in Polish Recent Cinema" (2007–2017) (DOI: 10.15804/kie.2019.03.02), I proposed a classification of contemporary Polish films about the decade of the eighties. I divided these films into “great biographies” on key historical figures such as Lech Wałęsa, Jerzy Popiełuszko or Ryszard Kukliński; “Small biographies” referring to the history of well-known people but operating outside the political sphere, such as Zbigniew Religa or the Beksiński family; “Settlement films”, in which the decade of martial law is shown as a period of, above all, various types of political and ethical choices that in one way or another affect modern times. The last group can be called “films about everyday life”, because they refer to the “Jaruzelski’s decade”, but they show it not from the side of entanglement in historical-political processes (although in most films they play a role in the characters’ lives), but from the everyday problems.
In my speech, I would like to check whether the films that appeared in the years 2018-2025 fit into this division, or whether some new trends have appeared in this area.

Author

• Arkadiusz Lewicki, U of Wrocław (Poland)