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How Does Cinema Become Lost? the Spectral Power of Socialism

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How Does Cinema Become Lost? the Spectral Power of Socialism Katarzyna Marciniak How Does Cinema Become Lost? The Spectral Power of Socialism the precipice’. He then announced the forma- tion of a Military Council of National Salvation (Wojskowa Rada Ocalenia Narodowego), in or- der to ‘rescue’ the Polish nation from subversive and harmful activities of undefined dissidents. This military coup was performed, per Jaruzel- ski’s assurance, in accordance with the Polish Constitution. Such was the formal initiation to Martial Law, which translates directly from the Polish as ‘A State of War’, and rhetorically reveals the paradox of this historical moment: while there was no actual war, the Military Council of Na- (Fig. 1) East Side, Łódź, Poland, 2004. tional Salvation and Jaruzelski, the General of © Kamil Turowski. the Army, appropriated the top national power and authority reserved for wartime. This was the SOCIALIST SHIVERS beginning of the period which for many Solidar- ity activists meant political round-ups, bans on I remember an old movie theatre, the Kino professional work, dispossession, and imprison- Popularne, in my hometown, Łódź, Poland— ment in internment camps; for ‘ordinary’ citi- a dilapidated building on Ogrodowa Street. zens it meant the austere era of military curfew, During the brief period of Solidarity, in the early prohibition on mobility, tightened surveillance 1980s, this place was known for showing politi- via officially tapped phones, and absurdly real cally risky Polish films, as well as foreign produc- ration coupons for butter, sugar, meat and al- tions deemed by the socialist censors to be un- most every other necessity, such as gas, shoes suitable for Polish audiences. In front of a screen and laundry detergents. On the eve of Martial made of a thick linen bed sheet, movie goers Law—and, symbolically, it was one of the most sat on small, uncomfortable, hardwood fold- persistently cold and harsh winters—Wojciech ing chairs to watch films, many of which would Marczewski’s Shivers (Dreszcze) premiered, soon be completely banned from public viewing. a film considered today in Poland a cult classic. Among them were Andrzej Chodakowski and Shivers acquired this status not only because Andrzej Zajączkowski’s 1981 Workers ’80 it offered a compelling critique of institutional- (Robotnicy ’80), and Andrzej Wajda’s 1981 ised indoctrination, featuring a coming-of-age Man of Iron (Czffowiek z Šelaza), a sequel to story of a teenage boy who is enticed to inform his 1977 Man of Marble (Czffowiek z marmuru) on his parents, but also because, having been concerning the Gdańsk shipyard strike of 1980 screened right before the imposition of Mar- and the beginnings of the Solidarity movement. tial Law, it was a powerful foretelling of what This short-lived flare of artistic dissidence was to come. Martial Law was indeed a time ended with the abrupt and brutal imposition of of cultural and social shivering—tanks and Martial Law on the night of December 12, 1981. armoured vehicles in the snowy streets, armed On the morning of December 13, citizens woke troops everywhere—which only slowly eased up to dead phones and radio and TV broadcasts into the next stage, the ‘period of normalisation’ of General Wojciech Jaruzelski’s sombre voice (1983–1986), an officially used term ironi- and his mannequin-like body in a military uni- cally acknowledging that the nation was finally form, a hauntingly grotesque transmission one emerging from the abyss of abnormality. can now easily find on YouTube. Using the fuzzy Mindful of this historical background, my rhetoric of national catastrophe, of unspecified essay discusses various pre- and post-1989 chaos and demoralisation, Jaruzelski claimed Polish motion picture and TV productions and that this was a ‘dramatic moment in Polish his- considers different meanings and registers of tory’ when ‘our motherland has been brought to ‘lost cinema’. The notion of the loss of cinema 17 invites complex reflections: which films have disavowing amnesia? How can one acknowl- been lost and for whom? What are the ideologi- edge these ghosts without either a leftist la- cal issues that motivated deliberate instances of ment that the socialist experiment is over, or an ‘shelving’ a particular piece of art in the social- impulse to automatically demonise the era of ist era? What specifically were the reasons that totalitarian repression? How can one perform rendered some films ‘risky’ for the well-being of such ghostly speaking without simply offering, the nation? Focusing my analysis on socialist to use Charity Scribner’s words, a ‘requiem for censorship but also, perhaps surprisingly, on communism’? As a relative of mine reminds the still unexamined post-socialist censoring me, wanting to defend our lives, no doubt, ‘After tactics, I will probe how socialism, once officially all, we all lived through this time, and look at celebrated and now repudiated, continues to us! We are fine, we have survived! Contrary to haunt the nation, imprinting its spectral power what the outside world may think, we managed on the New European cultural imaginary. Such to lead pretty normal lives!’ an argument brings me back to Jacques Der- rida’s discussion of spectrology, or the history of The many cases of banning politically charged ghosts and hauntings, in Specters of Marx, and films during socialism in Eastern Europe were his famous line: ‘It is necessary to speak of the well-known, at least to the local audiences. In ghost, indeed to the ghost and with it ... [out] Poland, the films that are most memorable and of respect for those others who are no longer or are often cited within the context of censor- for those others who are not yet there, presently ship include Jerzy Domaradzki’s Great Race living, whether they are already dead or not yet (Wielki bieg, 1981), Krzysztof Kieślowski’s born.’ He speaks of spectres in the context of Blind Chance (Przypadek, 1981), Janusz an ethical responsibility toward the ghosts, ‘be Zaorski’s Mother of Kings (Matka Królów, they victims of war, political or other kinds of 1983), Jerzy Skolimowski’s Hands Up! (Rőce violence, nationalist, racist, colonialist, sex- do góry!, 1981), Ryszard Bugajski’s Inter- ist, or other kinds of exterminations, victims of rogation (Przesffuchanie, 1982), and Ag- ... any of the forms of totalitarianism’ (Derrida nieszka Holland’s A Woman Alone (Kobieta 1994: xix).1 samotna, 1981). Each of these ‘shelved films’ Thinking about Derrida’s contention, I look (póffkownicy) was banned from release and at East Side (Fig. 1), a photograph that hangs distribution by the ruling Party authorities, who above my desk, shot on Wschodnia Street, not feared their ‘dangerous’ portrayal of socialist far from where Kino Popularne used to be. I reality. Even though each film has, of course, its remember how many times, as a darkroom as- own complicated history, I am nevertheless in- sistant, I helped develop it, trying to catch ‘just terested in the discussion of the meta-narrative right’ the eerie hollowness of the mannequin’s of censorship, which, as I would like to propose, gaze. That gaze needed to convey at once might be productively apprehended through blindness, lack of vision, and a shiny, almost the concept of socialist schizophrenia. On the mesmerising emptiness. It was one of those one hand, film production in socialist Poland, impossibly difficult photographs to bring to life; as in many other East European nations under it needed to perform its own ghostliness. The the Soviet grip, was regarded as a particularly volatile angle of the shot aims at instigating a potent creative practice worthy of state support, feeling of dizziness in the viewer. It is one of my following Lenin’s famous saying that ‘film is favourite images; it tugs at my heart, unhinges the most important of the arts’. Łódź, for exam- me, always, evoking remnants of my social- ple, is the home to the National Film School, ist past, and it simultaneously sends shudders an institution of national pride, which, unlike along my skin. Always, its eerie beauty fixes my many other educational facilities, was allowed gaze. I think of East Side as a visual metaphor artistic autonomy and flourished during social- for socialist shivers, an image which provokes ism, earning the city the name ‘HollyŁódź’. me to ask: how can one deal with the socialist The school has an internationally recognised ghosts without either romanticised nostalgia or reputation and is often cited in the context of its 18 famous graduates: Krzysztof Kieślowski, Roman they showed politicians laughing or giving Polański, Zbigniew Rybczyński, Jerzy Skoli- speeches while wearing sweaters.3 mowski, Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Zanussi. On the other hand, the unspoken mandate Hence, a film such as Wajda’s Man of Iron, that the film-makers were obliged to respect had which, in its partly fictionalised narrative, in- to do precisely with not showing what people cludes, for example, actual newsreels showing knew intimately and experienced daily in vari- scenes of brutal militia attacks on protesting ous degrees, depending on their social and class workers, was an obvious candidate for shelving. status: economic misery, privation, surveillance, Similarly, Skolimowski’s Hands Up!, a legen- treachery, bribery. In other words, paradoxically, dary film banned for over two decades, features all experiential displeasure, all the socialist a famously offensive scene in which students of ‘shivers’, all shades of socialist violence, meta- the Union of Polish Youths (Związek Młodzieży phorical and material, were off representational Polskiej, ZMP) put up a huge poster with a pic- limits.2 The website, Censorship, or the World ture of Stalin, evocatively giving the figure not without Words (Cenzura, czyli świat bez słów) one but two pairs of eyes (Fig. 3). In one of the (Fig. 2), devoted to the exploration of censor- interviews, Skolimowski describes Hands Up! ship in a global context and impressively created as ‘a silent scream ..
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