NOUVELLE VAGUE POLONAISE? TRACING A FILM-HISTORICAL PHENOMENON

After last year’s exploration of the non-conformists and rebels behind New Yugoslav Film, the 2014 goEast Symposium tackles the phenomenon known as the Polish New Wave. The pre-emigration films of Roman Polański and Jerzy Skolimowski exemplify the rebellious spirit of the generation Jean-Luc Godard dubbed the “children of Marx and Coca-Cola”. In the eyes of Western film critics, Polański’s NÓŻ W WODZIE / KNIFE IN THE WATER and Skolimowski’s RYSOPIS / IDENTIFICATION MARKS: NONE and BARRIER (and equally his Belgian-made LE DÉPART / THE DEPARTURE), all made between 1962 and 1967, represented milestones in a Polish “nouvelle vague”.
These filmic documents of rebellion and subversion created pop-cultural links between countries on either side of the Iron Curtain – a phenomenon that virtually cries out for a transcultural approach to film historiography. In the course of lectures and a discussion panel together with an accompanying programme of films, the Symposium examines aspects of the Polish New Wave, its leading protagonists, the “continuators”, and the interaction of modern history with that of culture and film as well as related developments in other countries in East and West.