Polish Film Industry under Communist Control: Censorship Conceptions and Misconceptions

Misiak, Anna ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7153-944X (2013) Polish Film Industry under Communist Control: Censorship Conceptions and Misconceptions. Iluminance, 24 (4). ISSN 0862-397X

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Abstract / Summary

Poland’s film directors could finally forget about the pressures of complying with government censorship when communism was pronounced dead in the country on 4 June 1989.
Th at day, the nation’s first free elections marked the transformation from socialism to capitalism and democracy.1) Before long, censors had disappeared, much like the governing Party, whose interests they had once represented. According to Edward Zajiček: “[a]s in a fairy tale […] filmmakers’ dreams came true […] without any interference from outside, […] [they] could now work freely on scripts of their choice”.

Ironically, as soon as Polish cinema underwent full political liberalization, it became clear that in exchange for political freedom, it had lost something that was impossible to acquire in a free market environment: the generous financial support of the old censor, the Communist Party.

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