5th Tehran International Animation Festival 2007 | Poland

Poland - The Land of Visual Ideas

Polish animation began before World War II. In 1917, Philosopher and journalist Feliks Kuczkowski (1884-1970) filmed The Chairs Flirtation and The Telescope Has Two Ends.

In 1918, Kuchkowski created a film with animated objects. The work was the practical rendition of what he called visual filming", a sort of improvisation in front of the camera. In the 1920s he made The Orchestra Conductor, a second visual film using clay.

Another pioneer was Stanislaw Dobrzynski, who made a few films from 1918 to 1924. In the following years, the most active Polish animator was Wlodimierz Kowanko, who worked in Cracow, Katowice and Warsaw. His best films were Mr. Twardowski (1934), based on a popular tale, and The Mice's Expedition for a Cake. Kowanko's style shown traces of American influence. Jan Jarosz, from Lwow, began his career in the mid-1920s. In 1931, he made the notable Puk's Adventures. Later, he experimented with a hand-drawn sound track in an advertising film. In the 1930s, Jaryszewski was active in Poznan; in 1924, he released Female Stars and Male Stars.

Stephan and Franciszka Themerson occupy a special chapter in Polish animation with their experimental work (collages, animated objects and direct painting stock), from Pharmacy (1930) and Europe (1931-32) to The Eye. The Ear (1945, made in Great Britain).

In the field of puppet animation, the finest artists include Karol Marczak (former assistant to Ladislas Starewich in Paris and director of The Golden Pot. 1935) and Maksymilian Emmer and Jerzy Maliniak (Toy Soldiers. 1938, partially animated). It was precisely a puppet animator, Zenon Wasilewski (1903-66), who represented the only link betweend pre-war and postwar productions. A poet and a satirical cartoonist, Wasilewski learned the basics of animation in the mid-1930s while drawing for Kowanko. In 1938, he made some advertising films with puppets. The following year he used this same technique in a tale featuring the dragon of Wawel (Cracow's hill); because of the German invasion in September 1939, the film was left unfinished, without a sound-track. Wasilewski spent the war years in the Soviet Union as a representative of Polish Resistance. Afterward, he returned to his country, establishing his residence in Lodz, where he founded a production and distribution company (which would later become the important Se-Ma-For).

Poland was wom-out by the world conflict, with its major cities largely destroyed and a razed capital. Lodz and Katowice, two of the least stricken cities, became the very first centers of animation. In Katowice, a group named Slask made production with animated drawings for the state department of cinema. Film Polski. Later on, a studio in Bielsko-Biala specialized in animated drawings, while the studio in Lodz became pre-eminent in puppet animation.

It was in this field the Wlodimierz Haupe and Halina Bielinska distinguished themselves with Jonosik (1954), the first Polish animated feature film. In the field of animated drawings, only Wiladislaw Neherbecki's films for children are noteworthy.

After 1956, in Poland too there was a gradual thawing in favor of art films. The initiators of this new attitude were the then debuting artists Jan Lenica and Walerian Borowszyk, who made their first films together: Byl Sobie Raz... (Once Upon a Time..., 1957) Dom (The House), 1958) and Nagrodzone Uczucie (Love Rewarded, 1947).

Lenica had studied music, architecture and fine arts before dedicating himself to graphics, where he soon made a name for himself.

Borowczyk, undertook the same kind of studies before passionately applying himself to cinema. He made his debut in the early 1950s with short live-action films. The collaboration between the two artists, marred by their strong and independent personalities, ceased in 1958. Within a few months of each other, both Lenica and Borowczyk emigrated to the West. They never resolved their frictions, but independently they were both able to attain high levels of creativity.

Lenica and Borowczyk's joint works of 1957 mad history in Poland, as their sense of absurdity, surrealism and anguished settings became favorite themes of the Polish school.

Studio Filmow Rysun Knowych is located in Bielsko-Biala more than one thousand TV Series episodes, commercials, and short and feature films, using a variety of traditional and modern animation techniques. Films for children represent the major part of the Studio's production and amount to some 75 percent of its output, and a considerable part of the studio's fame owes to its most popular characters such as "Bolek and Lolek", and "Little Dog Reksio".
Rysunkowych Film studio has been co-operating with some foreign film producers like "Hanna-Barbara" (USA), Kratky Film (Czech), and Norsk Film (Norway), and is ready to expand its co-operations with animated films' producers and distributors both at home and abroad.

Black And White- Director: Waclaw Wajser- Time: 9'28''