POLISH FILM CLUB 'OKO'

Afterimage, Polish with English subtitles Powidoki is the final film by the great Polish director, Andrzej Wajda, and a story about another great Polish artist, an avant-garde painter and art theoretician, Władysław Strzemiński. The film covers the post-war period of Strzeminski’s life who, in the Stalinist era of social realism and art’s servitude to the collective, dares to believe in artist’s autonomy and abstract art. Despite his fame, communist past, and a war hero status, Strzeminski’s refusal to compromise leads to his persecution, dismissal from his professorial position, and erasure from the museums’ walls. De-credentialed as an artist, he is unable to continue his work. The story of Strzeminski becomes the story of Polish artists, their struggle to maintain artistic integrity and their resistance against intellectual tyranny. It is worth noting that Wajda selects for the film the music of another great Polish artist of this era, a modernist composer, Sir Andrzej P...