Authors

Discussion

In their study of Polish contemporary visual culture of the 20^th century cataloguing the most prominent types of images, the scholars Iwona Kurz, Łukasz Zaremba, Magdalena Szcześniak and Paulina Kwiatkowska describe – among others – the banner. Images-banners have the power to express and to incite emotions, needs and demands of groups and individuals. They also facilitate the building up of communities and the fostering of their political involvement. What is more, such images play a role in constructing identities and showing resistance. They provide a metaphorical and physical space where people gather and protest against different forms of oppression. I recognize those features of images-banners in some of the new Polish films and photographs that deal with a broadly defined world in conflict. In the presentation I will refer to selected fiction and documentary images that tell stories of protests and resistance set in Poland. The works I intend to analyse will be: The Best Fireworks Ever dir. by Aleksandra Terpińska (2017), “Once Upon a Time in November” dir. by Andrzej Jakimowski (2018) and photographs of the March of Independence by Ada Zielińska and Piotr Uklański. The proposed reading and approach towards the images will be placed in contexts of collective anger (Tomasz Markiewka, 2021) and Judith Butler’s Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (2015).