03/06/2005

For some years Poland has been absent from the official selection at the Cannes festival. However, during the two final decades of the 20th century Polish cinema was capable of making a mark on the international stage.
Two Polish filmmakers won the Palme d’Or : Andrzej Wajda with L’homme de fer in 1981 and Roman Polanski with Le pianiste in 2003, a co-production between Germany, France, Poland and the UK. Directors such as Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Ryszard Bugajski, Maciej Dejczer, Dorota Kedzierzawska and also Jerzy Stuhr won numerous prizes at prestigious festivals, such as Cannes, Berlin and Venice.
The reasons for the Polish absence at Cannes are diverse. But among the most obvious explanations are, on one hand, the deficiency of the financial system for production and, on the other hand, the insufficiency of promotion, though legislative changes are currently being discussed at parliamentary level.
According to Waldemar Dabrowski, Polish Minister of Culture, « it is true that Polish cinema has been in crisis for several years. It’s an artistic and structural crisis. Also, Eastern European cinema is no longer in fashion as it once was. Polish, Hungarian and Czech films were once sought after and enjoyed because they represented a rebel voice, those who fought against the system. In fact now the public have had enough of these subjects."

With no access to the Palme d’Or, Polish films and their directors stood out in the Festival’s parallel competitions. In 2004, we saw Jan Komasa, student at Lodz National School for Cinema, winning the third Cinefoundation prize with Fajnie, ¿e jesteœ. The famous Lodz school was represented in the same 57th festival by Norah McGettigan with her Irish-Polish co-production A Song for Rebecca. This year, the young Polish director Anna Jadowska (Touche moi, Grand Prix in the off-competition at Gdynia, Poland’s largest festival, in 2004, out of competition at Cannes and Berlin 2004) presented to the Cannes public her new short film, Corridor in the programme entitled "Europe in Shorts X: Eastern Europe" from Coordination of European Film Festivals, shown during Critics week.

"I am very happy to have been able to present Corridor at Cannes because it’s the most sincere work that I’ve ever done, the director told us. But what makes me really happy is not only the single screening at the Cannes Film Festival but what came from it. My film, and the entire programme of Europe in Shorts X, will be shown at film festivals in many other countries. Also, this film, condemned to be forgotten in a way as an end of studies film, has had its life prolonged."

(Translated from French)