charged 1960s by splintering found footage to heighten our sense of personal tragedy and widespread societal trauma. Finally, his contemporary Czarnecki harks back to staged docudramas but revamps film language with modern technology, using infrared cameras for the first time in Polish film. Varied as they are, what connects these films is the
centrality of the human figure. From railway and fac- tory workers to circus performers, from an alcoholic chess player to a solitary farmer, there is no end to the variety of human subjects that we meet in this series. But more importantly, the Polish nonfiction filmmakers avow the singularity of each of their films’ protagonists. In a political climate that demanded unanimity and bred conformism, their insistence on individuality was a great feat. It is matched by their acute self-awareness, which often problematizes representation. For if nonfiction film holds up a mirror to reality, what reflection of ourselves do we catch in it? The Polish filmmakers offer multiple viewpoints, revealing reality—and the idea of truth—to be fraught, yet always worth pursuing. Are, then, the people we meet in Polish nonfiction
hybrids tragic pawns of a system that engulfs them? Or, on the contrary, are they agents who actively, if at times unconsciously, perpetuate the problems that have been handed down to them? This and myriad other questions we must answer for ourselves. Our responses will depend as much on the political climate we live in as these per- sons once did. For the Polish filmmakers’ passionate engagement with both politics and life makes history one of the main “characters” in this series. Our shared experience of history as the great unknown, against which we must each stake a claim if called upon—not to mention the tremendous empathy it takes to place one- self in someone else’s shoes, as we see here again and again—is why these films still fascinate today.
THE CASE OF PEKOSIŃSKI
RAT CATCHER
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