StopTrik & Feinaki Present Polish Animation in China
By the invitation of Feinaki Beijing Animation Week we present in March and June in China a special take on Polish animation heritage. The upcoming screening will be held on March 22nd at the Drum Tower West Theatre (鼓楼西剧场) in Beijing. You can read all about the programme below or practice your Chinese by exploring fascinating blog about art-house animation delivered by Feinaki team!
Polish Animation: “Poetry of Pessimism” and the Whole World Beyond
This programme presents a historicized take on Polish animation – a film art that has thrived internationally for decades, driven by daring and inspiring artistic pursuits. As an industry, it was reborn in the 2000s and has since firmly maintained its prestigious position in the global art-house animation circuit.
In general and simplified terms, Polish culture can be described as a battleground of ideas, torn between the adherents of national, religious, and social homogeneity and the proponents of a nuanced, diversified, and pragmatic approach to the roles and functions of individuals within society. Giannalberto Bendazzi, a doyen of international animated film history, coined a phrase that has long been used to describe Polish animation: the “poetry of pessimism.” This term was meant to capture the distinctive qualities of Polish animated films from the 1950s to the 1980s.
After World War II, Polish animators quickly realized that the language of animation is built upon intangible metaphors and subtle associations that can generate profound meanings about the surrounding reality while simultaneously opening viewers to explorations of their own subconscious. Another prominent film critic, Chris Robinson, in his book “Corners Are Glowing,” referred to the classics of the so-called "Polish School of Animation" as follows: “As in other countries in the former Soviet sphere, Poland's polychromatic, protean cultural strengths and traditions outweighed, outwitted, and outlasted a monolithic and imposed political formula. (…) Influenced by trends in contemporary Polish graphic arts, this <<Polish School>> in the 1960s and beyond tended towards dark-toned images, absurdist humor, and subversive social satire. Its narratives are preoccupied with exploring themes of individual alienation, existential angst, and the limits of expression.”
The creators of House (1958), Jan Lenica and Walerian Borowczyk, used animation as a means of reflecting on collective imagination, mechanisms of memory, and desire. The Oscar-winning Tango (1980) by Zbigniew Rybczyński is an experimental masterpiece created solely with analogue techniques. In this film, empirical reality is radically condensed into the interior of a room where twenty-nine humans and one dog simultaneously engage in their mundane daily activities without ever interacting or interfering with one another.
During the political and economic transformation of the 1990s, as Poland shifted from a post-socialist to a capitalist system, funding for art-house animation was drastically reduced, leading to a decline in production. Contemporarily, many animators remain interested in traditional techniques while enriching them with digital technologies and experimental approaches. In the music video This Country Is Strange (2007) for the band Pink Freud, Przemysław Adamski and Maciej Szupica explore the anxieties of an average man bombarded by mass media focused on historical heritage and its current political implications. Jarosław Konopka’s Underlife (2011) can be understood as a horror film, but it can also be interpreted as a psychoanalytic portrait of a soul tormented by trauma. Zbigniew Czapla, in Paper Box (2011), attempts to rescue memories of family photographs that were destroyed in a flood – the film actually documents the very process of their physical degradation and disappearance. In Summer 2014 Wojciech Sobczyk revokes a contemplative spirit of the “Polish school of animation”, its ambiguous ambient, and allegorical reading of past experiences. Ewa Borysewicz in To Thy Heart (2013) and Marta Pajek in Impossible Figures and Other Stories II (2016) present uncompromising portrayals of womanhood, combining visual mastery with sharp social commentary or a deeply introspective look into one’s own psyche.
Curated by Olga Bobrowska