POLISH FILM ACADEMY

At the end of 1907 or beginning of 1908, Mojżesz Towbin, owner of Warsaw’s cinema at 118 Marszalkowska  Street, decided − probably for the first time in Polish territory under three partitions − to produce a contemporary feature film. We do not know under what title it was screened in 1908 at Towbin’s cinema, or if it was screened at all; according to Russian press reports, the administrative authorities banned it from being shown in Warsaw. We do know, however, that the film was shown abroad − including Russia, France and Italy.

The plot is based on authentic events that took place in Greater Poland. The first of them was a strike by children in Września, the second − the protest of a peasant in Greater Poland, Michał Drzymała, who was refused permission to build a house on his own land by the Prussian authorities, so he moved into a circus wagon. The creator of the film carefully linked both of these events, focusing on the fate of a single family in Greater Poland.

The Warsaw cinema at 118 Marszałkowska Street showed the film after the outbreak of World War One under the title Prussian Culture. The French eight-minute version of the film, titled Les Martyrs de la Pologne, is the oldest surviving Polish film from a hundred years ago. A copy with one longer subtitle in French was found in 2000 in the archives of the Bois d' Arcy near Paris by Małgorzata and Marek Hendrykowski.


Małgorzata i Marek Hendrykowscy – www.akademiapolskiegofilmu.pl