Essential Polish Animation — Essential Polish Animation( Blu Ray)

Here’s an expansive history lesson in Polish animation, released by the ever-reliable Radiance; I’m reviewing promotional discs only, but the full package comes with a booklet of writings, and I guarantee there’ll be the immaculate presentation that Radiance always delivers. As the title suggests, the two discs collect up short animated Polish films, and the set covers a large time span and a large range of content. For those of you who take an interest in animation, this is all gold dust.

The first disc contains two programmes of films: Pioneers and The Golden Age. The former starts with Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica’s Banner of Youth, from 1957; this three minute abstract film is a black and white barrage of collaged images, some abstract shapes and patterns and some extracts of film footage depicting sports, war, disasters, musicians, and all bookended by images of eyes. All of this is soundtracked by some tame jazz. It feels subversive but also somewhat ineffectual to my 2026 eyes. There are two commentaries to the piece; one from Daniel Bird, which contains the memorable quote from Borowczyk that: ‘all cinema is animation’, and one from Michael Brooke who clarifies that some of the imagery was obtained by painting directly onto the film, that the film was made to celebrate a communist youth newspaper. and that jazz was unusual at this time in Poland, since it had previously been banned under Stalinism. Next is Love Requited by the same duo, and released in the same year. This short film is made entirely using paintings, which the camera sometimes moves around, producing jolting, dynamic, unnatural movements from the subjects. The film depicts Mr Ludwik traversing various scenarios looking for love, until he finally gets the girl via a solar eclipse. Bird’s commentary places the film in a longer tradition of Polish avant garde film, whilst Brooke points out that the music was recorded by the factory workers of a Gasworks brass band. A more enjoyable effort comes next: The Changing of the Guard, by Halina Bielinska and Wlodzimierz Haupe, from 1958. This eight minute short is a charming stop motion film depicting a little world made of wire buildings, populated by matchboxes, some of which meet a fiery end. It looks great - you will marvel at some snoring matchboxes - and has the feel of a wonky children’s show. Brooke’s commentary here details the careers of the two film makers, drawing particular attention to Bielinska as an important woman figure in Polish film. The Changing of the Guard won the 1958 Cannes short film award, and it was well deserved. Lastly, in the ‘Pioneers’ section, we have New Janko the Musician, from 1961, a solo effort from Jan Lenica. This eleven minute film is, again, gloriously wonky, and matched by a fantastic electronic soundtrack. The narrative is not precisely clear, but follows a musician and his mechanical cow, showing him playing a pipe which he later switches for a piano after a dream sequence. The story ends with Janko ascending into the heavens, through skies that were previously full of small flying machines. The whole thing, constructed using stop motion and old engravings, verges on the nightmarish at points, and really does succeed in creating a world familiar yet very alien.

The Golden Age begins with A Little Western from 1961, a six-minute film by Witold Giersz. It’s a visually striking effort that mixes paint and abstract photographic backgrounds to tell a story of two cowboys, one yellow and one blue, pursuing a red cowboy and trying to steal the gold he has panned from a river. They eventually steal it, leading to a fight where the two thieves combine to create a larger green cowboy. The narrative is simple enough, and little different to a Tom and Jerry cartoon in that regard, but the figures look great - clearly human but also odd. In particular, the ghost-like mouths and eyes that appear, often very briefly, on the cowboys are really effective. Next up is another Lenica film, from 1963: Labyrinth. This is another nightmarish creation, with a winged man flying over a city before landing and walking around it, encountering odd and grotesque beasts, people, and occurrences. The film ends with him being near brainwashed by a half-man, half-machine figure, before flying away and meeting his doom at the hands of other flying creatures. It’s a very effective film, with an impressive atmosphere that calls to mind more modern films involving people investigating apocalyptic, possibly zombie-infested, cities, abandoned by humans. This creepy and slippery atmosphere is aided greatly by the film’s visual style, constructed from collaged engravings and photos, all in black and white with a few hits of colour, and the abstract, sound effect-driven soundtrack. After this, Playthings by Kazimierz Urbanski, from 1967, feels a tad simplistic: it’s basically a succession of escalating fights between stick figures, moving from swords and bows, to tanks and guns, to missiles of extreme destructive power. The film neatly ends with the stick figures apparently destroying the world and being returned to the primitive weapons they started with, but the somewhat obvious message feels a bit flat and laboured. On a similar level, The Chair from 1963 by Daniel Szczechura is a short drawn animation that depicts people fighting over a position at the front table, presiding over a meeting. It has a slapstick quality at points, but again doesn’t really amount to a whole lot - though I’m in the minority here since Brooke’s commentary informs us it won numerous awards. The Red And The Black, by Giersz, from 1963 is similar to his A Little Western, though here it is simple figures, painted in stark colours, depicting a matador in a bullfight; it does joltingly, and comically, break the fourth wall - even showing the film makers stood behind their camera - but its rather slim pickings, if technically clearly skilled. Stefan Schabenbeck’s Everything Is A Number, from 1966, has a very different style, having the feel of engravings, with a clean black-on-white look. Here a figure wanders through a landscape where numbers and mathematical devices crop up as obstacles, wildlife, rain, and cages. The narrative doesn’t have any obvious, or defined, theme but it’s a very compelling and thoroughly fantastic world: the medium of animation is perfectly geared towards such creations, and Everything Is A Number is a great example. Horse is another Giersz film, from 1967, but here the painted animation is much less minimal, and whilst the story - a horse attempting to avoid capture by a soldier - isn’t hugely compelling, it’s a stunningly beautiful work. Miroslaw Kijowicz’s 1968 Cages is back to black and white drawing and stop motion; it portrays two prisoners in adjoining cells, with one acting out superiority over the other. The superior prisoner then stops the other from escaping, confiscating his tools of escape, only to have another cell appear and its prisoner then confiscates the saw: the prison is then revealed to be somewhat infinite in size, coupled with infinite confiscations presumably. There’s an obvious social message here, but like some of the other films in this collection, it feels a little laboured. Brooke’s commentary discusses the political aspects of the Polish animated film industry, pointing out that Western eyes were always keen to read anti-communist themes into the films, but that the reality of things was never that simple. The Stairs, 1968, by Schabenbeck is a definite high point - literally in fact. It depicts a figure working their way through a Escher-esque labyrinth of stairways, becoming increasingly tired, until crawling up to the highest point, and promptly becoming a step. It looks fantastic, with the stop motion doll moving around a beautifully shot maze of stairs, all captured with attention to shadows: it has a wonderful, compelling, mysterious atmosphere. Brooke’s commentary here discusses Schabenbeck’s troubled and very short career, and examines some of the technical aspects and difficulties of creating The Stairs.

The second disc introduces The Silver Age, featuring films from the 1970s. Ryszard Czekala’s The Son, from 1970, is a great opener. The story, as best I can tell, involves a rural older couple receiving a visit from their son, who has relocated to a city, however the story is less important perhaps than the atmosphere, which is incredible. The film is black and white and constructed using cut paper and stop motion, with Czekala effectively playing with camera focus to blur images, and deploying a mixture of close-up and far distant shots; however, it’s the films pace that is so entrancing. There is something Bela Tarr-esque about The Son: whereas many of the films here are very kinetic, but actually very slow in getting anywhere, The Son is genuinely slow, granting it a real feel and atmosphere. An excellent start. Next up is Journey, by Daniel Szczechura, from 1970; this is an odd one. Again, the narrative raises more questions than answers: essentially the film depicts a figure taking a train journey to a house in the woods and back again; and that’s that. This minimal simplicity, where most of the film sees the man looking out from a moving train over a bleak landscape, gives the film a mysterious, if formal, air. It’s not overwhelming, though its clearly technically accomplished, and comes with a good electronic soundtrack. A commentary from Kambole Campbell discusses Szczechura’s career and compliments the open-to-interpretation nature of Journey. Roll Call, another 1970 film by Czekala, is similar to The Son visually - if much darker. It depicts a roll call at a concentration camp, where a commandant repeatedly orders the inmates to get up and down; eventually, one figure refuses and is promptly shot, whereupon all the inmates disobey and are then mown down by machine gun fire. It’s themes are more obvious than those of The Son, but its direct bleakness works in its favour. Kijowicz’s 1971 Road is a somewhat inconsequential short film, drawn in black and white, which sees a figure walking along a road, coming to a fork, struggling to decide which way to go and subsequently dividing into two halves; the halves later meet up and can’t reassemble perfectly. There’s not much else to say. I’d seen Zofia Oraczewska’s 1976 film Banquet before, on Radiance’s edition of Ga-Ga: Glory to the Heroes; it’s a paper cut animation, on painted backgrounds, of a lavish banquet where the food comes alive and graphically eats the guests - nightmarish and gory in its own way. There’s a commentary from Ela Bittencourt which discusses the themes of the film, as well as the gendered issues of the Polish film industry. Barrier, from Jerzy Kucia is up next; this 1977 stop motion film depicts animated figures, created from photographs, waiting behind a train barrier, they become increasingly agitated until the train arrives, at which point Kucia portrays several birds moving in and out of the screen. Bittencourt’s commentary discusses Kucia’s role as a leading light in Polish animation, as well as the mundane aspects of humanity that the film draws out, however, Barrier left me a bit nonplussed. Striking a distinct contrast, Julian Jozef Antoniszczak’s 1979 film A Hard-Core Engaged Film. Non Camera, is a garish, pulsating film that tells a little fable involving cinema and a greedy old woman, but narrative be damned, this is just a trip. Drawn and painted directly onto the film, Antoniszczak’s colourful figures have the kinetic feel of early animations like Steamboat Willie, but here everything is grotesque and gaudy, with colours bursting past the black on white lines. It looks incredible, high-speed psychedelia. The final film from the Silver Age is another offering from Kucia: 1979’s Reflections. Again, it’s formed using stop motion and animated photographs (I think) and it shows an insect struggling to free itself from a cocoon, only to be chased and attacked by a larger insect once it is free. The altercation takes place in a pool of water, sending ripples out around the two figures - hence the film’s title; Reflections ends by reversing the camera and showing a man looking down into the pool. Like Barrier, I can admire it on a technical level, but beyond that it left me cold - despite the best efforts of Bittencourt’s commentary to convince me otherwise.

The final section of films is titled End of an Era, featuring films from the 1980s. The first, Tango, directed by Zbigniew Rybczynski in 1980, is simply stunning. It opens on an empty room, which sees people added one by one; each person operates on a loop, entering the room, performing a task, and then leaving the room; so we have a child entering through the window, retrieving a ball, and then exiting through the window; we have a naked woman entering, dressing, and then leaving; we have a man bringing a parcel into the room and then leaving it before exiting, and another man who enters and steals the parcel before exiting; and so on. It’s completely mesmerising, and builds, much like a piece of music, to a tangled, chaotic mess of looping people in the room. It’s only eight minutes long, but time does become lost during it. Campbell’s commentary discusses how Tango took seven months to make - it seems to be animated layers of stills from filmed actors - and discusses Rybczynski’s career, noting that Tango won an Oscar in 1983 but that the director was arrested after an altercation with a security guard, who wouldn’t allow him back into the ceremony - despite Rybczynski having his award in his hand. Next, Solo In A Fallow Field, from 1981, by Jerzy Kalina explores similar themes around time. The pencil-drawn animation portrays a man ploughing a field with a horse; the animation is rough and slurred from the start, but as he ploughs, the nationalistic music pauses and rewinds - in the style of tape manipulation - pausing and rewinding the animation with it. This metaphor is fully realised at the end, showing the man and horse ploughing the grooves of a vinyl record, evoking questions of nationhood, national histories - and futures.- and the linearity of time. It’s very effective and very smart. Kucia’s The Source, from 1982, is a dark piece of manipulated film, creating a scratchy, black and white aesthetic, complimented by rickety piano that becomes increasingly detuned. The film shows various household items: fruit, plants, water, etc, moving in various ways; Bittencourt’s commentary suggests that Kucia is here playing with the idea of still life paintings, and there is a strange beauty to the film, like it’s an ancient experiment from the dawn of cinema. I enjoyed it, despite my comments on his earlier works. Following this we have another Kucia work: Chips, from 1984. This is a more cryptic affair, with a screen that stays largely black throughout whilst white images - some drawn, some derived from photos or film - move in and out of the darkness. The imagery is generally blurred and scuffed, and sometimes severely washed out, and depicts hands performing household tasks, as well as shots of a family on a riverbank; the film ends with a speeding shot from a train moving through a crowded station. As with Barrier and Reflections, it’s technically impressive but didn’t connect with me. Bittencourt’s commentary discusses censorship in Poland and Kucia’s use of repeated imagery and themes, memory, and his movements between formal and realistic images. Next we have Piotr Dumala’s A Gentle Woman, from 1985, which is based on a Dostoyevsky short story. That said, the narrative makes little sense, but involves a woman apparently trapped in a room against her will by a man. There’s a giant spider, too but your guess is as good as mine. Visually, however, the film is stunning, created by paint on plaster panels, giving it a dark look akin to cracked oil paintings.; there are also several breathtaking moments where the animation mimics a camera moving around the room - genuinely quite shocking when it first happens, and a testament to Dumala’s skills. The final film of the boxset, Parade, from 1986, is another Kucia creation, and again not something that grabs me. The black and white film, with splashes of added colour, combines manipulated film footage of agricultural labour and musicians, and often focuses on formal patterns and repetition - accompanied by repetitive sounds. The images, which concentrate on the kinetics of repetitive actions constantly move horizontally across the screen. Again, another Kucia work that didn’t move me.

The only extra, beyond the numerous commentaries, is an hour-long documentary called Animated Poland, which has Michael Brooke talking us through the history of the genre gathered together by the boxset. Brooke’s excellent and detailed guide contextualises Poland as a powerhouse of animation, and points to pre-war pioneers like Władysław Starewicz whose work - some of which involved animating dead insects!- put Polish animation on the map, so to speak. Brooke also has a lengthy segment on the animated works of Borowczyk, which are largely collected elsewhere in an excellent and recommended Arrow boxset (and as a separate release), but other than that the documentary really directs us through the artists and works in the boxset, fleshing out the commentaries and providing a potted history. Brooke draws attention to the development of new animation techniques, as well as the presence of a Polishness though many of the films, and ends the documentary with a quick look at contemporary films that have continued the lineage of Polish animation. It’s a great survey, which made me want to watch the films again, as well as search out some of the work not included in the boxset.

This is one of those sets where you’ll probably know your interest just from reading the title. It is hardboiled, and there’s no disguising that, so if you’re interested in animated film and its history this will be of consuming interest to you. If you don’t have that interest, it’s perhaps a hard sell… The high points of the set are truly great: Tango, The Stairs, The Source, New Janko the Musician, Labyrinth, The Son, and A Hard-Core Engaged Film. Non Camera are all genuinely great, showing what an incredible medium animated films are - if you think about it, it’s the one filmic format where anything can be visualised, and this enables the creation of truly otherworldly works that operate using alien logic (just imagine a world where AI films are actually good). I think it’s these type of works that most appeal to me, and that’s reflected in that short list of highlights. So there is some incredible work on these discs, which have ignited an interest in animation for me, and I recommend them, but as stated, it’s a little hardcore, but for that Radiance should be saluted.