Arkadiusz Lewicki, Marcin Adamczak, Ilona Copik, and Piotr Zwierzchowski, Paradoxes of Late Socialism. Polish Popular Cinema of the Eighties, Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2025, p. 270.
The image of the late Polish People’s Republic is marked by
a constellation of tensions: between a difficult reality and its propagandistic
representation, between the authorities and society, between rigid ideology and
aspirations for freedom, and between the desire to preserve cultural continuity
and the inevitability of impending change. Polish cinematography had to operate
within these conditions, forced to adapt to internal transformations while at
the same time becoming increasingly exposed to global cultural influences.
These and related issues are addressed in Paradoxes of Late Socialism.
The discussion takes into account the political, social, economic, and cultural
circumstances that shaped cinematography. The development of individual film
genres is outlined, and the evolution of popular cinema in other socialist
countries highlighted. The book also examines how the authorities dealt with
cinema and popular culture in general. Themes such as eroticism, rock music,
and retro nostalgia are explored as they appeared across popular genres and
reflected the social changes of the 1980s. The final part analyzes three major
narrative types – comedy, crime-action, and fantasy – to show how shifting
genre conventions and social transformations are represented in these films.
The book is available in Open Access:
https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/Paradoxes_of_Late_Socialism/titel_9141.ahtml