Polish Documentary Classics – Andrzej Munk

Kierunek Nowa Huta / Destination Nowa Huta 1951

Pamiętniki chłopów / Peasant Diaries 1952

Kolejarskie słowo / A Railwayman's Word 1953

Gwiazdy muszą płonąć / Stars Must Be Alight 1954

Niedzielny poranek / One Sunday Morning 1955

Błękitny krzyż / The Men of the Blue Cross 1955

Spacerek staromiejski / A Walk in the Old City of Warsaw1958

Polska Kronika Filmowa (numer jubileuszowy nr.52) / Polish Film Chronicle (anniversary edition nr.52) 1959

The figure and work of Andrzej Munk (1921-1961) is enshrouded in legend, the sources of which can be found in his untimely, tragic death, but most importantly in the belief that the creative output he left behind, and what he did not manage to do, hides a secret. This belief is based on experience coming from the encounters with the films he signed, and on the feeling that his sudden departure terminated an important movement in the history of Polish film – a movement which was separate, with no spiritually equivalent followers or successors. Going back to Andrzej Munk's four feature films (Man on the tracks, 1957, Eroica, 1958, Bad luck, 1959, Passenger, premiere 1963 – film finished by Witold Lesiewicz) confirms their intellectual openness. Time – the unrelenting auditor of value – did not upend or obliterate the importance of these films in the output of Polish culture. In his most important works Munk turned out to be an artist whose dialogue with the recipient lost nothing of its conceptual, social, and moral topicality. Original and entangled in tradition, modern for his generation, and universal in his historiosophic and ethical reflections, Andrzej Munk is an artist whose works are important because the discourse they hold – about the freedom of the individual, about responsibility and dignity – never loses its topicality.