Getting even and becoming equal: Warsawthrough the European lens (1980s–2000s)

The article discusses the shifting image of the Polish capital in a seriesof European feature films made over the past 25 years (all of themrealised with significant Polish or East European involvement), withparticular attention to the way in which these co-productionsnegotiate and imagine Warsaw’s status as a ‘European’ city. In contrastto pictures from the 1980s – with their focus on stories of East-Westdefection and portrayals of Warsaw as an undesirable Eastern Blocsetting – productions from the mid- and late 1990s bring into viewjourneys to the Polish capital (rather than away from it) and shiftattention to the city’s location in between two historic centres ofpower (Western Europe and the Soviet Union). Post-communistWarsaw then becomes the ideal (masculine) site to settle Cold Warscores and ‘get even’ with the East and the West alike. The postaccessionperiod, in turn, marks a shift towards a politics of locationcharacterised by multilateral cooperation within the ‘New Europe’. Ahighly intriguing example of both diegetic and institutionalEuropeanisation is provided by the Scandinavian-Polish co-productionThe Woman That Dreamed About a Man (2010), which offers a reflexiveand intertextual take on Warsaw as a desirable shooting location.

Publication year:2018