Starring – Photos: On Polish Iconographic Films Made from Photos

Abstract

Short iconographic films made from photos constitute a separate trend of the Polish school of documentary. It has been expanding with new titles over several dozen years. Fleischer’s Album (1962) by Janusz Majewski and A Working Day of Gestapo Man Schmidt (1963) have taught Polish documentary filmmakers how to explore the possibilities of this form of film art. The two documentaries played a pivotal role in paving the way for a whole series of films based on pictures taken by the German troops and officials from World War 2, which presented the private look of the Nazis on the war and its victims. The subject matter of films made from pictures was gradually broadening. These films told the story of the Holocaust and of lack of the victims’ look on the Holocaust, embalmed in photography. Films on the Polish resistance movement were also made, with particular emphasis on the Warsaw Uprising. The turn of the 19th and 20th century became the subject of documentaries at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s. Pictures used in almost all of Kazimierz Karabasz’s films are regarded as a medium enriching the documentary with a new reality dimension that cannot be captured by the camera. His films, Summer in Żabno (1977) and Portrait in a Drop of Water (1997), show that films made from photos are perfectly suitable for depicting the present day. [originally published in Polish in Kwartalnik Filmowy 2006, no. 54-55, pp. 212-230]