director Wojciech Marczewski
screenplay Wojciech Marczewski
director of photography Jerzy Zieliński
music Zygmunt Konieczny
with Janusz Gajos, Zbigniew Zamachowski, Teresa Marczewska, Piotr Fronczewski, Władysław Kowalski, Michał Bajor, Maciej Kozłowski, Jan Peszek, Jerzy Bińczycki, Krystyna Tkacz, Artur Barciś, Henryk Bista
awards
European Film Award nomination for Zbigniew Zamachowski (Best Supporting Actor), 1991
Grand Prix at Avoriaz Fantasy Film Festival, 1992
Best Film and Best Actor for Janusz Gajos at Burgos Fantasy Film Festival, 1994
Grand Prix, Golden Lions for Best Film, Silver Lions for Best Actor (Janusz Gajos, together with his part in ‘Interrogation’) and for music (Zygmunt Konieczny together with his music for ‘Lava. Story of Adam Mickiewicz’s Dziady’ and ‘The Funeral of a Potato’), Journalists Prize and prize awarded by the President of the Radio and Television Committee at the 15th Polish Film Festival in Gdynia, 1990
Golden Film (Złota Taśma), prize awarded by the Writers Association SFP, 1991
Golden Duck (Złota Kaczka) ‘Film’ magazine Readers Award, 1991
[PROLOGUE OF THE FILM]
Censor: Censorship is necessary. Censoring is an art. A good censor should be an artist. Besides, it’s a game. If, for instance, someone writes: “Down with Communism”, then you know it has to be deleted. But if someone writes “pigs”? Then you have to consider whether it refers to a pigsty or to the authorities. Therefore, let’s put off those banalities about inquisition, about democracy, until another time. I don’t know if you are aware of the fact that the moment censorship is abolished as an institution, the duty of censoring will fall onto you.
JAN JÓZEF SZCZEPAŃSKI, A VERY SERIOUS JOKE BY MARCZEWSKI [BARDZO POWAŻNY ŻART MARCZEWSKIEGO], ‘FILM’, 1990, NO. 52
Marczewski has surprised the Polish public with a new formula of squaring up to the past. His ‘Escape from the ‘Liberty’ Cinema’ is a comedy, but it is a peculiar comedy, arousing more concern than glee (…). The scheme is based on building a filmic illusion by introducing a cinema within a cinema and granting equal rights to both fictitious realities by furnishing the latter with a theatrical autonomy (…). The motif of ‘the rebellious screen’ fulfills here the role of an allegorical conscience. The peculiar double-dealing of the allegory rests on the fact that its addressee and victim is the censor, that is someone whose duty is to supervise the observance of the official unequivocal meaning of all the phenomena and contents of life.
history periods
