Polish New Wave. The History of a Phenomenon That Never Existed

The film festival filmPOLSKA 2009, which is taking place for the fourth time in Berlin and in the past years has been predominantly dedicated to contemporary Polish cinema, will expand this year, not only with regard to the number of participating cinemas but also to the scope and orientation of the program. In addition to current Polish feature and documentary films of the past months, the retrospective titled "The Polish New Wave" presented at Arsenal takes a look at a film historical and aesthetic phenomenon that hitherto has not existed in Polish historiography as the designation of a specific cinematographic trend. Just recently, the Polish curators Łukasz Ronduda and Barbara Piwowarska from the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw introduced the name "Polish New Wave" as an umbrella term for a number of Polish documentary and feature films produced in the past 40 years that categorically reject traditional cinematic forms, take formally radically paths and can be situated between contemporary art and cinema. These initiators of rewriting Polish film history have documented their insights in this film series and in a publication edited by both.