Our own courtyard: Post-traumatic Polish cinema

Abstract

This article probes contemporary Polish cinema, examining it through the sociological theory of cultural trauma. The majority of post-1989 Polish films correlate with national tragic narratives that emphasize the negative social effects of the fairly recent systemic transformation. The author chooses to analyse two films (The Wedding (2004) and The Debt (1999)) as her case studies. Both productions received many awards in the home country. To Polish critics, the two films demonstrated a significant achievement of the country's film industry that should be capable of exporting and promoting Polish culture in the international arena. Yet, the worldwide success proved to be beyond the reach of the directors and with only a few honourable mentions and special jury awards, they won no major trophies outside Poland. Going straight to DVD, The Debt has never been widely released in the cinemas either in the United Kingdom or in the United States, while The Wedding opened with a three-year delay in the United Kingdom in a few cinemas only, but there has not been an international DVD release as yet. Made at crucial moments for the political and social history of the country, both films depict ethically dislocated and confused post-traumatic characters and both reverberate the post-1989 collective Polish experience. For the domestic audience the two films cumulate and amplify post-traumatic syndromes, emblematizing a larger thematic tendency of the Polish contemporary cinema. This new inclination distinguishes current developments in the Polish cinematic culture from the country's past productions. The author argues that the thematic reliance on the post-traumatic becomes the main facet of the national Polish film production, which by adhering to its own social reality celebrates its cultural otherness and thus limits its appeal to domestic audiences and a handful of international experts who specialize in the subject of Eastern European cinema.