INDUSTRIAL Matinée – Film – Man of Marble

In this INDUSTRIAL Matinée we present the film:

Człowiek z marmuru (Man of Marble, 1977, 156 min., Polish with German subtitles)

Director: Andrzej Wajda, screenplay: Aleksander Ścibor-Rylski, cinematography: Edward Kłosiński, with: Jerzy Radziwiłowicz, Tadeusz Łomnicki, Kazimierz Kaczor, Krystyna Janda, Krystyna Zachwatowicz, score: Andrzej Korzyński

Man of Marble is a masterpiece of Polish film history. Due to its political sensitivity, the film could be realized only 17 years after the screenplay had been written.
The film elaborately links different narratives and eras: The young film student Agnieszka is researching the topic of working class heroes for her diploma project, when she comes across a statue of the mason Mateusz Birkut, a communist hero whose rise and fall is told in flashback sequences.

„Wajda connects the immediate present of the 70s with the period of socialist formation, weaving together the two different time periods by means of flashbacks and archive material. Young director Agnieszka (Krystyna Janda) puts together different types of material like a mosaic in order to reconstruct the life of a former "worker's hero" who is  sidelined following an accident. The suppression of the heroes once celebrated in the 50s dovetails with the defensive attitude of the television editor who Agnieszka confronts with her findings 20 years later.“ (http://www.arsenal-berlin.de)