Poland and Ukraine on Screen: Postwar Cinema, History, and Political Memory

A talk with Professor Ewa Mazierska, University of Lancashire

How has Polish cinema represented the entangled histories of Poland and Ukraine?

Professor Mazierska will examine postwar film, national narratives, historical conflict, and the ways in which cinema participates in the construction, negotiation, and transformation of political and cultural memory. She will argue that Poland and Ukraine both occupy semi-peripheral positions in Europe. Both can be described as semi-peripheral of the type described as interface (semi)peripheries, being squeezed between larger and more powerful neighbours (Germany on the West and Russia on the East). This resulted in employing different strategies of survival and advancement: cooperation and rivalry. Both Polish literature, such as Henryk Sienkiewicz With Fire and Sword, and Polish cinema, reflect these strategies. Their deployment has been also affected by history, especially the Second World War, the influx of Ukrainian economic immigrants in Poland and the recent Russo-Ukrainian war.

Drawing on postcolonial theory, Mazierska will demonstrate how these events are reflected in specific Polish films. 

Bio

Ewa Mazierska is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Lancashire, UK and Honorary Professor at the University of Gdansk.

She published over thirty monographs and edited collections on film and popular music, including The Artistry and Legacy of Queen (ed. with Tony Rigg, Bloomsbury, 2025), Polish Popular Music on Screen (Palgrave, 2021), Viennese Electronic Music: 1990-2015: Cultural History(Routledge, 2018), Poland Daily: Economy, Work, Consumption and Social Class in Polish Cinema (Berghahn, 2017) and monographs of several directors, such as Roman Polanski, Jerzy Skolimowski and Nanni Moretti.

Mazierska’s new book concerns Roman Polanski’s films after The Pianist (forthcoming from Berghahn in November 2026). She is the principal editor of Studies in Eastern European Cinema. Her work was translated to over 20 languages.