“They demanded that negativity be burned.”
– They demanded that the negative image be burned, which fortunately did not happen, and that Andrei Vajda be held criminally accountable – as he put it. Christina Janda, who played the role of cabaret singer Antonina Dziwicz in the legendary film “Interrogation” by director Ryszard Bugajski. The role that Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieślak refuses brought the Janda Prize at Cannes (the second prize in history for a Polish actress after Jankowska-Cieślak for “Another Look”) and, as the actress herself says, one of the most important achievements in her career. The painting, painted in 1982, received a distribution ban, which was not lifted until after the political transition in 1989.
The banned scenes have finally arrived on TVP
Agnieszka Holland has long faced censorship attempts and attacks by the authorities “Green border”. One of her most appreciated films – “One Woman” – brings the director to, among others, the Golden Lions of Gdańsk. The story of feelings between a postman and a former miner shows the reality of Poland in the 70s and 80s without embellishment. It was created just before the outbreak of martial law, and was banned by the authorities. It may not see the light of day until 1987, in an abridged version. The scenes removed by censorship would finally reach TVP in 1999. They can be identified by the English subtitles, because only the foreign version contains the censored scenes.
Fighting at the highest prices
Most of us know the story of Richard Ochodzki by heart against the backdrop of the absurdities of the Polish People's Republic, but not everyone remembers the behind-the-scenes of the famous “Miś”. Ultimately, a quarter of the entire film disappears from the comedy. The censorship did not like, among other things, the scene of buying meat or handing over a passport, and the surname of the main character was no longer Nowochódzki. He fights Stanislav Pareja's censorship affects the director's health. It costs them heart attacks and early death.
The harshest possible punishment
Stanislav Pareja's struggle with the authorities (and at some point also with the artistic community that ridiculed him) was demonstrated by the film “What Would You Do to Me If You Caught Me”, which was made before “Miś”. A screening of director Krzykowski's comedy is supposed to look like an execution. One senior party figure even claims that the film has as much in common with reality as it does with life on the moon. Deputy Minister of Culture and Art, Janusz Wilhelmi, who is hated by the creators, issues the harshest possible punishment. The production receives the fourth lowest artistic category without approval for distribution. A few days after this event, Pareja was hospitalized due to a heart attack.
International blockade
It is said that the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party, when he saw this adaptation of Marek Hlasko's prose, said that Polish directors only saw drinking vodka in our country. The production was hailed as an “ideologically incorrect” picture. So Alexander Ford, who previously directed “Teutonic Knights” which had an audience of 33 million (!), must shelve his film “The Eighth Day of the Week” for… a quarter of a century. The authorities not only banned its distribution in Poland, but also prevented its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.
“They expelled me from the country”
— It was a very strong political and anti-Stalinist film, which unfortunately turned my life upside down. I struggled to get on screen, but a huge billboard bearing a picture of Stalin with four eyes was too much for the authorities to accept, and I was actually expelled from the country, recalls Jerzy Skolimowski in Hands Up. The director and screenwriter incurs the ire of the authorities with his film, so the premiere of the political drama created in 1967 takes place only 18 years later.
“There are several versions of the explanation.”
Record holder of the Polish People's Republic, which was not banned for 37 years but simply disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The film “Fern Flower” by Jacek Butrymović from 1972 was discovered by film expert Piotr Kardas in 2009. – There are several versions of interpretation. The first is that the team leader did not ask for this. Passendorfer didn't talk to me about this at all. The second – Azuki – says that the film was hidden because Azuka as an actor was on the rise at the time, was very popular, and in my case played a sarcastic and unsympathetic character. The third reason is because of Stanisław Wohl, a Jew who was the artistic supervisor of the film and was fired after 1968 – as Butrimović explains in 2018.
“Comment under the guise of comedy”
– We managed to smuggle social commentary under the guise of comedic situations – recalls Jerzy Groza, who died in 2020 Anna Senyuk. Her words can be fully confirmed by the fact that one of the paintings by the author of “Czterdziestolatka” was afraid of censorship. Party for Ten Plus Three, by Jan Himmelsbach, shows the paradoxes of the socialist system, so its fate seems sealed. The film with Leon Nemechek will have to wait seven years for its premiere.
France to help Poland
The first version of the script for the film “The Marble Man” by Andrzej Wojda was published in the Warsaw “Culture” on August 6, 1963. The authorities did not allow its production. Permission had been obtained to begin filming in the next decade, and the script had to be changed significantly. Culture Minister Josef Tejcema took full responsibility for the emergence of the controversial and anti-regime film Oujda. In turn, thanks to the Parisian distributor Tony Molière who buys a single copy, the director of the Cannes Film Festival can see the Polish production and screen it out of competition.
She withdrew from the Oscars
The sequel to “Man of Marble” – “Man of Iron” was not easy either. The film, which was scripted in just six days, was also shot very quickly to premiere at Cannes. The game is worth it, because the Polish film wins a historic laurels for our country – the Palme d'Or for Best Film. This makes him a favorite in the fight for the Oscar. However, it was withdrawn from the Oscar race by Polish authorities, which the state-owned company explains as “an intensification of the anti-Polish campaign in the United States.” The story of social and political changes in Poland also disappears from cinemas.
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