Inne spojrzenie. Wyobrażenia historii w filmach Wojciecha Jerzego Hasa, Jana Jakuba Kolskiego, Filipa Bajona i Anny Jadowskiej - studium przypadków

Abstract

Another Way considers the way in which four film directors present unique vision of the Polish national history (World War II, Poznań June ’56) and challenge established ideas about “historical film” perceived as a “window onto the past”. According to the author, films selected for the purpose of the book do not try to tell its viewers “what really happened” or to revise the history itself (impossible task) but discuss with the tradition of historical representation (by multiplying narrative perspective, mixing genres and blurring the distinction between documentary and fiction). The aim of this book is to explore the strategies by which filmmakers undertook three basic tasks: contesting, visioning and revisioning history. The films are analyzed in the paradigm of cultural turns: interpretative turn (Szyfry), postcolonial turn (Pornografia), performative turn (Poznań 56) and narrative turn (Generał. Zamach na Gibraltarze) and in the context of historiophoty defined by Hayden White as “the representation of history and our thought about it in visual images and filmic discourse”. The fundamental argument is that nowadays films are the most influential and powerful way of visioning history (prosthetic culture) but – as historian Robert Rosenstone points out – must be seen not in terms of how they compare to the written history but as a way of recounting the past with its own rules of representation.