The history of cinema in Poland is almost as long as the history of cinematography, and it has universally recognized achievements, even though Polish films tend to be less commercially available than films from several other European nations.
Andrzej Witold Wajda was a Polish film and theatre director. Recipient of an Honorary Oscar, the Palme d'Or, as well as Honorary Golden Lion and Honorary Golden Bear Awards, he was a prominent member of the "Polish Film School". He was known especially for his trilogy of war films consisting of A Generation (1955), Kanał (1957) and Ashes and Diamonds (1958).
Tadeusz Borowski was a Polish writer and journalist. His wartime poetry and stories dealing with his experiences as a prisoner at Auschwitz are recognized as classics of Polish literature.
Polish Film School refers to an informal group of Polish film directors and screenplay writers active between 1956 and approximately 1963. Among the most prominent representatives of the school are Andrzej Wajda, Andrzej Munk and Jerzy Kawalerowicz.
Kanał is a 1957 Polish film directed by Andrzej Wajda. It was the first film made about the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, telling the story of a company of Home Army resistance fighters escaping the Nazi onslaught through the city's sewers. Kanał is the second film of Wajda's War Trilogy, preceded by A Generation and followed by Ashes and Diamonds.
Daniel Marcel Olbrychski is a Polish actor best known for leading roles in several Andrzej Wajda movies and also known for playing a defector and spymaster Vassily Orlov alongside Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie in the movie Salt.
The Promised Land is a 1975 Polish drama film directed by Andrzej Wajda, based on a novel by Władysław Reymont. Set in the industrial city of Łódź, The Promised Land tells the story of a Pole, a German, and a Jew struggling to build a factory in the raw world of 19th-century capitalism.
The Hourglass Sanatorium is a 1973 Polish surrealist film directed by Wojciech Jerzy Has, starring Jan Nowicki, Tadeusz Kondrat, Mieczysław Voit, Halina Kowalska and Gustaw Holoubek. It is also known as The Sandglass in English-speaking countries. The story follows a young Jewish man who visits his father in a mystical sanatorium where time does not behave normally. The film is an adaptation of Bruno Schulz's story collection Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. It won the Jury Prize at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival.
There is a wide range of ways in which people have represented the Holocaust in popular culture.
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, also known as Ladies and Gentlemen, to the Gas Chamber, is a collection of short stories by Tadeusz Borowski, which were inspired by the author's concentration camp experience. The original title in the Polish language was Pożegnanie z Marią. Following two year imprisonment at Auschwitz, Borowski had been liberated from the Dachau concentration camp in the spring of 1945, and went on to write his collection in the following years in Stalinist Poland. The book, translated in 1959, was featured in the Penguin's series "Writers from the Other Europe" from the 1970s.
Feliks Sypniewski (1830–1903) was a Polish painter and artist who painted mostly historic battle scenes drawn from the borderlands of Poland and Germany, and his most favourite animal - horses.
Polish culture during World War II was suppressed by the occupying powers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, both of whom were hostile to Poland's people and cultural heritage. Policies aimed at cultural genocide resulted in the deaths of thousands of scholars and artists, and the theft and destruction of innumerable cultural artifacts. ''The maltreatment of the Poles was one of many ways in which the Nazi and Soviet regimes had grown to resemble one another", wrote British historian Niall Ferguson.
Leszek Melchior Drogosz was a Polish boxer and actor.
The Zamość uprising comprised World War II partisan operations, 1942–1944, by the Polish resistance against Germany's Generalplan-Ost forced expulsion of Poles from the Zamość region (Zamojszczyzna) and the region's colonization by German settlers.
Pan Tadeusz: The Last Foray in Lithuania is a 1999 Polish film directed by Andrzej Wajda. It is based on the 1834 eponymous epic poem by Polish poet, writer and philosopher Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855). As in the poem, conflict between the Soplica and Horeszko families serves as a backdrop for discussion of issues of Polish national unity and the struggle for independence.
The outbreak of World War II in Europe completely changed the situation of Polish cultural and literary life. All institutions were liquidated by the Nazi and Soviet occupiers. Artists were forced to create in secrecy or in exile. Polish Literature during World War II suffered tremendous losses under the occupation; however, writers did continue to produce works both underground and abroad.
Battle of Warsaw 1920 is a Polish historical film directed by Jerzy Hoffman depicting the events of the Battle of Warsaw (1920) of the Polish–Soviet War. It was released in September 2011. It was filmed in 3D using the Fusion Camera System and is one of the most expensive movies in the history of cinema in Poland.
The Day of the Siege: September Eleven 1683 is a 2012 English-language Polish and Italian historical drama film based on the 1683 Battle of Vienna and directed by Renzo Martinelli. The film was released on 12 October 2012.
The occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II (1939–1945) began with the German-Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, and it was formally concluded with the defeat of Germany by the Allies in May 1945. Throughout the entire course of the occupation, the territory of Poland was divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (USSR) both of which intended to eradicate Poland's culture and subjugate its people. In the summer-autumn of 1941, the lands which were annexed by the Soviets were overrun by Germany in the course of the initially successful German attack on the USSR. After a few years of fighting, the Red Army drove the German forces out of the USSR and crossed into Poland from the rest of Central and Eastern Europe.
