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Abstract
The Polish documentary taste of the 1970s – referred to retrospectively as “creative documentary” – had no equivalent in the West. No longer to objectively constitute reality, he borrowed from both fictional cinema and the avant-garde of the interwar period to produce highly expressive films that presented the life stories of “real” people. This bankruptcy centers on Wojciech Wiszniewski, one of the leading filmmakers of this movement, who produced his most notable films with the Educational Film Studio (WFO). The essay explores how the WFO, located near the Łodź National Film School but far from Warsaw’s prestigious documentary centres, has become an incubator for highly unorthodox film practices. In addition, the essay describes the relationship between the WFO and those other centers, where Wiszniewski also made several short films. films.
Keywords: Poland; documentary film; Wojciech Wiszniewski; Educational Film Studio (Wytwòrnia Filmòw Oświatowych; WFO), Łodź; Documentary Film Studio (Wytwòrnia Filmòw Dokumentalnych), Warsaw; polish television
In 1978, journalist Małgorzata Karbowiak published in Film, one of the country’s leading film magazines, a detailed investigation into the scenario of the Polish Educational Film Studio (Wytwòrnia Filmow Oświatowych, or WFO, based in Łodź). The popular science film, which was once “the calling card of the WFO,” now finds itself in a “deep dead end. ” Fewer and fewer documentaries of this type were produced. Furthermore, the WFO has failed to fulfill its mandate to supply educational films to schools. “In 1977, WFO produced 55 school films. This year they plan to produce 50, and in 1979, only 30! »She lamented. Karbowiak, in part, blamed a recent round of budget cuts and a reorganization of awards categories at the annual Krakow film festival, leaving those genres without any chance of national recognition. She basically attributes the “change in the studio’s profile” to the arrival of new talent. “It’s not difficult to notice anything else,” she writes: “there is simply less interest on the part of filmmakers in the subject. The most productive proof of this is that the organization of young artists accumulated in the WFO is obviously interested in other things. ”