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„By the railroad” is a film based on one of the novels of Zofia Nałkowska's „Medallions”, written just after the World War II (1946). This debut of Andrzej Brzozowski was banned from being shown publicly for 27 years. Zofia Nałkowska was a member of the Central Committee for Investigating German Crimes in Poland, a body documenting from 1945 to 1949 Nazi crimes on Jewish and Polish citizens during the Second World War. In her novels, Nałkowska in very modest, moderate way describes the atrocities of German occupation in Poland. The book “Medallions”, one of the most vital sources of social imagination about the World War II in Poland, is an important part of school curriculum, read by generations of Polish pupils.

Film “By the Railroad” by Brzozowski is an accurate film adaptation of Nałkowska’s novel under the same title. It concentrates on the Jewish woman who jumped off the train heading to concentration camp. She breaks her leg and lays on the ground by the railroad, while people from the nearby village debate what they should do with her. The plot of the novel and the film raises the issue (often neglected in official narrative) of Polish reactions to Holocaust and especially Jews trying to survive “on the Aryan side” - outside ghettos and concentration camps. The question of Polish “bystanders” to Holocaust, was only one of issues tackled in Nałkowska’s novels. Film by Brzozowski clearly concentrates on the indifference of the Catholic citizens of Poland in the face of perpetrations aimed at their Jewish compatriots.  

Banning Brzozowski’s film from public distribution was a result of fear that this oeuvre could be used for “anti-Polish propaganda” and could “threaten Polish reason of state” (Preizner 2010). Events presented in the film contrasted with the historical narrative of Polish authorities, which presented Polish citizens as victims of Nazi crimes and neglected the importance of Jewish experience.

Film critics (Preizner 2010, Calderón Puerta 2010) state that the film itself is more suggestive than Nałkowska’s novel. Role of Halina Mikołajska, austere filming, concentration on one short plot have a great influence on the audience. However,  the film was shown in public television broadcast only in 1992 (sic!), late in the night and without any meaningful public discussion.

Wojciech Zamecznik worked on the series of graphic artists' portraits from the 1940s to the 1960s. On the pictures one can distinguish the representatives of "Polish school of graphic design" - the milieu of artists producing posters for cinema and theatre production, known for their unusual formal solutions. Pictures include portraits of Henryk Tomaszewski, Roman Cieślewicz, Jan Młodożeniec, Wojciech Fangor, Franciszk Starowieyski, and Waldemar Świerzy. Apart from individual portraits, the series consists of group photographs, and representations of work in shared workshops and newspaper offices. The most important magazine presented on the picture is the "Project", artistic magazine launched after "the Thaw" (period of detente after Stalin's death - 1956 in Poland). The artistic environment gathered in the "Project" editorial team wanted to promote modern forms of graphic design and opposed the dominant socialist lack of aesthetics.

The Jerzy Grzegorzewski Section, which is a part of the Artistic Archive of the Studio Theatre, was officially opened to public in 2010, five years after the Grzegorzewski's death. It contains the most complete and the most studied collections of the Archive – the collection of Jerzy Grzegorzewski, a great figure of the Polish theatre. The legacy consists of personal notes of the director, photographs, and video recordings documenting his plays, as well as a vast collection of press snippets and reviews of his work. Some of these documents have been digitalised and are available on the Section’s website, together with commentaries and critics’ texts on Grzegorzewski’s works, written by young theatrologists. Mateusz Żurawski is working on another publication based on the documents from the Section. The Section closely cooperates with Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute, an institution based in Warsaw, documenting the history of modern theatre.

The 1988 Freiheit? Nein, danke! is one of the most prominent creations of Łódź Kaliska, and a breakthrough work in the career of the artists. After the ties brining together the wider community of the Pitch-In Culture had dissolved, Łódź Kaliska members focused on collaboration among each other, and moved from their previous anarchistic, art-world-contesting stance towards a postmodernist play of quotations, pastiche, and borrowed meanings. In 1987 the group entered into possession of a video camera, which allowed it to record performances for camera, document events and recreate previously unrecorded actions. It was at that time that the now iconic stagings of classic works of art were created, along with the famous Freiheit? Nein, danke!, a jocular reconstitution of Eugene Delacroix's Liberty leading the people.

Nonetheless, this work represents more than just a simple joke on the art history canon. Its perverse title — to add fuel to the fire in German, which at that time in Poland could be interpreted as a purposeful provocation — reflected the years of struggle of Łódź Kaliska against the aporia of liberty in the field of art. Subsequent experience in creating “embarrassing art”, “idiotic art”, “unfocused art” etc., conceptualised in numerous theoretical texts, have led the artists to believe that any violation of artistic conventions, insult to audience, as well as disdain for art institutions, and creation of intentionally trivial, mediocre, and pointless works, will sooner or later be absorbed by the art system. Acts of resistance belong to the domain of art, and it is in accordance with its rules that they are interpreted. Artist’s liberty may seem very ample but it stems from the very status of the artists and their works (similarly, in Łódź Kaliska’s view, there is no freedom from society). Thus, the idea of freedom in art seems to be naïve or false — that is why Łódź Kaliska artists decided to make do without such freedom.

Freiheit? Nein, danke!is a rejection of liberty offered to artists by the society, in a deliberate, bantering, frivolous, and immature act. As a paradox, if anywhere, it was in those brief moments of antics, shenanigans, immature jokes, frolics, and mischief where Łódź Kaliska saw freedom, and again, paradoxically, it was burdened with great solemnity and tension, in spite of the festive and ludic atmosphere. The film serves as a testimony: the artists are fooling around in front of the camera, pushing each other out of the frame, frolicking, making faces, waving around their genitalia.

The film shot by Andrzej Kwietniewski (according to his and Marek Janiak’s concept) accompanied the creation of a photograph by the same title. The photograph was displayed in 1988 during the Polska fotografia intermedialna exhibition, a major event at the Art Exhibitions Bureau (BWA) in Poznań. In front of the large-format photograph, a nude female model was placed, around whom Łódź Kaliska artists continued with their actions, such as colouring elements of the photograph, or adding humorous slogans. The event attracted the attention of the visitors and gained recognition among at least some of the critics, e.g. in Poznań Krzysztof Jurecki expressed a positive opinion on Łódź Kaliska. However, there was a scandal too: during the dinner, the members of the group threw a pork knuckle in the direction of the table where Andrzej Lachowicz and Urszula Czartoryska were seated.

The altered, repainted version of the 1989 photograph, known by the title The Bull Man is currently in the depository of the Museum of Modern Art.

(https://artmuseum.pl/pl/kolekcja/praca/lodz-kaliska-czlowiek-buhaj-freiheit-nein-danke).

Sources:

Jarosław Lubiak (ed.), "Szczerość i blaga. Etyka prac Łodzi Kaliskiej w latach 1979-89", Łódź 2009.
Łódź Kaliska (ed. & comp.), "Bóg zazdrości nam pomyłek", Łódź 1999.
Marta Pierzchała (ed.), "Biała aura", Łódź 2010.