Polish cinema.

Since 1989, Polish cinema has been going through a period of radical change. While the final outcome of this change is still unknown, it is clear that at the very least Poland's director-driven cinema is being transformed into a producer-dominated one. Under the communist regime, studios were automatically subsidized by the state. The state continues to provide funds but now on a competitive basis: the producer must present his budget and proof of having at least thirty percent of the funding from other sources, which might include individual sponsors, film companies, private businesses, or foreign coproducers. Nearly half of the films in 1992 were produced in cooperation with Polish state television. Its share in the costs varied from forty percent up to one hundred percent (in four cases). And a considerable number of Polish films have been made as coproductions with foreign partners, both from the West and the East. France and Germany have been particularly willing to work with Polish filmmakers, even on some very ambitious projects.

Once thirty percent of the funding is guaranteed, a producer can then take the project to the state, which will grant up to seventy percent of the funding, evaluating the project on its screenplay and the cultural and economic value of the project.

This model has so far proven to be workable. Since its implementation in 1989, an average of thirty films per year have been produced. In November 1992, thirty-three features were shown, including nine debuts, at the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia. This, no doubt, is proof of vitality.

But while Polish film production may have adapted to the new environment, distribution has not. Ninety-five percent of all films shown in Polish theaters are American, and works by Polish filmmakers are rare. Young audiences prefer the American films which cater more to their tastes and preferences.

Overall the moviegoing audience is shrinking. There is competition from video, cable, and television, and the population is financially strained by the high cost of economic transition. Movie theaters are closing, and most of those that remain open (approximately 700 at the end of 1992) are in miserable condition. Both funds and expertise for advertising are lacking. A special Agency of Film Distribution supports both private and state distributors who will risk introducing Polish films on the market, but even with assistance an audience of only 50,000 (out of a total possible public estimated at ten to twelve million) is considered a success.

The first Polish hit in this new environment has been Kroll by Wladyslaw Pasikowski. It is a man's story about relations in the army, about love, betrayal, and vengeance. Following the example of American action movies, Kroll appealed to young Polish audiences. Controlled Conversations, a comedy by Sylwester Checinski about the absurdities of life under martial law, was also very popular, as was Paper Marriage by Krzysztof Lang, a drama about a marriage triggered by the desire to acquire permanent residence status in England. After their successes abroad many people went to see. The Double Life of Veronique by Krzysztof Kieslowski and Europa, Europa by Agnieszka Holland. Those are both ambitious and demanding compared with the above mentioned films. Nevertheless, private distributors prefer comedies or action movies.

Pigs by Pasikowski will be perhaps the biggest hit among youth in 1993. Violent and brutal, it is a story about the former secret police who are full of energy and eager to act, but who have suddenly been turned adrift and do not see any future for themselves. Pasikowski claims this is the Polish version of black cinema. The story is told in an American fashion. His heroes are impulsive people with complexes but no scruples. Force is the highest value for them. Pasikowski's movies have clear misogynist aspects. He employs a lot of vulgarities in his dialogue, and shows with a certain gusto violent, even sadistic scenes. It is difficult to say whether those are traits designed to please a certain audience or whether they are the expression of an authentic moral shock of a generation. His is the generation that lived through the twilight and collapse of the Great Utopia, through the disintegration of a certain order and which thus lost trust in humanity, in the possibility of redemption. Thus Pasikowski stirs up controversies and disputes. Wajda sees in him the future of Polish cinema. Some critics accuse him of cynicism or even nihilism. Others simply see a blatant commercialism, the repetition of popular cliches and patterns which appeal to the lowest instincts of the public.

The controversy surrounding Pasikowski's Pigs points to broader and more complicated issues, notably the crisis of post-Communist society, a society which feels both deceived and disappointed in its expectations. The violence and brutality of many recent Polish films reflect the unanticipated difficulty of the transition period, of having to reorient oneself in a changed reality. Finding oneself suddenly lost and disoriented, as so many have, is fertile ground for suspicion and distrust, even aggression and destructiveness. There is need for a scapegoat. "I'm under the impression that Polish cinema is a reflection of our society, it is the way we are," says Adam Michnik, a juror of the Festival in Gdynia and one of the last moral authorities amidst the chaos and confusion. "It reflects our moral and intellectual condition. There were among those movies some which I enjoyed. But all the time I had the impression I was witnessing a serious crisis in Polish culture."

Well-known director Kazimierz Kutz, Chairman of the Jury, added, "We have seen the panorama of what is happening not only in the Polish cinema but also in other areas of our lives: an enormous confusion of values, meanings, and symbols. It is the landscape after battle, of life at a crossroads. There emerges now the need to bring order into the chaos, to name precisely and accurately diagnose the situation."

Everyone stresses the fact that a certain era in Polish cinema is over. It has lost its privileged position and does not know how to make use of its recently acquired freedom. Censorship indeed disappeared but the rule of the market and the producer appeared. Advantageous for many reasons, coproductions are a source of constant pressure. Specifically Polish or 'difficult' topics are excluded. One must look for 'safe' topics. A new conformism is being born.

Polish cinema has ceased to be the instrument of social and political critique it once was. It has lost its role as moral leader and conscience of the nation. It has to face foreign competition and establish its relation with the public on a new basis, as in the Western countries where film is simply one element of the entertainment business or, at best, a piece of art. This situation is frustrating for the filmmakers, especially those of the older and middle generations. They have to change tracks, look for new topics, different languages. The Aesopian language of allusion, symbol, and metaphor is no longer justified. Escape from Cinema Liberty by Wojciech Marczewski, produced so recently but just at the threshold of the new era, looks archaic today, precisely because of its poetic belonging to the 'past,' a bygone era. Now the same or much more can be told in a direct way. Today's viewers, especially young ones from the post-Solidarity generation, are struck by the pathos of Marczewski, his romantic sonority. Romanticism, lofty slogans, the rending of garments and of souls are not in vogue. What is praised is irony, mockery, or even blasphemy.

In 1991 the wave of bitter, scoffing portrayals of the formerly sacred reached its peak. They were not necessarily good movies, but they were interesting as a phenomenon, as a spontaneous reaction to what had gone before, as the voice of a new generation. Leading this trend were young directors. Death of a Childmaker by Wojciech Nowak is an excellent example of this genre with its unmasking, its rapacious view of the mentality and existence of an average breadwinner who is the typical embodiment of national virtues and vices. Death of a Childmaker uses totally different conventions than, for example, Marczewski.

Disenchanted by 'the war at the top,' the infighting among the leaders, Polish society turned away from politics. This is one of the reasons for the lack of reaction to Wajda's newest film, The HorseHair Ring. The film refers to traditions and topics of the Polish School and draws upon motifs from Ashes and Diamonds. It was created at the wrong moment, just like Juliusz Machulski's Squadron. The first serious film by this director, Squadron is the story of a Russian regiment oppressing the January Uprising of 1863, playing on the ambivalence of Polish-Russian relations. The same is true for Moan by Jerzy Wojcik. The tendency toward martyrdom borders on the ridiculous and does not meet with the expected interest of the audience. Further proof of this is the fate of Cynga, a labor camp drama by Leszek Wosiewicz, and Janusz Zaorski's Maidens and Widows, a Siberian drama whose heroines are Polish ladies from upper class circles.

The twilight of an era when politics constituted the highest value is shown with twisted irony in Sauna by Filip Bajon. The sauna of the title is a metaphor for a socialist camp in which everything and nothing change. Bajon's movie distinguishes itself by its penetrating view of reality. Also devoid of the banal overview of life in Poland is Waldemar Krzystek's Discharged from Life, a story of young officers who find themselves at the margins of normal society. This film reminds us that history is a continuous process and that it is not possible to forget the past totally because it stubbornly persists in and around us. The young director tries to render the paranoiac character of the present Polish situation.

Robert Glinski departs from familiar stereotypes and cliches in a film based on the memoirs of Alexander Wat's wife, All That Really Matters. Olga Watowa was deported during the Second World War to Kazakhstan, but Glinski's movie does not belong to the martyrdom genre. It reaches farther and deeper. It shows us the interesting clash of two distant cultures, the European and the Asiatic. It paints a rich and complex portrait of the heroine, trying to persuade us that under extreme threat man survives thanks to the power of love. Love is more powerful than fear, hunger, and death. All That Really Matters is in a way polemical in regards to the message of Holland's Europa, Europa. It limits the role of chance and of the instinct of biological survival, stressing instead the importance of human will and character.

Zanussi's Silent Touch can be counted among the works proposing the defined vision of reality and of man's fate. This film is the latest chapter in his reflections on good and evil, on love and indifference. Zanussi continues his discourse, paying little attention to the changing sociopolitical reality.

There are numerous directors who do not know what to do in the new situation. Should one accept with humility the role of a craftsman who can be hired and who must follow the directions of those having money, or should one pursue against all odds the higher vocation of the artist? Many grab at straws like drowning men, latching onto subjects that are in vogue or in demand, whether it's Jews, the history of Polish-German relations, or reckoning with the recent past. Yet in most cases they do not have anything to say, so nobody is moved by their films.

Polish cinema has been absorbed by mediocrity. The renowned critic Andrzej Werner claims that filmmakers, scared by the changed situation, the dictatorship of the market and of producers, lack the courage to be themselves, to speak in their own voice. The near future will show whether they are indeed capable of being themselves under the new circumstances. The entire nation is having enormous problems with this task. The criticism of socialism was a relatively easy task. One could always count on the unanimous endorsement of the audience.

Before there was always an ideal model looming in the distance, a perfect design against which an imperfect reality could be measured with the hope of possible improvement. The discreet charm of democracy and freedom lies in its very lack of ideal types. The unanimous audience no longer exists. It has disintegrated into small groups voicing their particular concerns. The code of national understanding has ceased to exist. Everything has to be started anew.

Maria Kornatowska is the film critic for Nowy Dziennik, the Polish-language daily in New York City. Translated by Justyna Duriasz.