Visions of Avant-Garde Film: Polish Cinematic Experiments from Expressionism to Constructivism

Warsaw and London-based filmmakers Franciszka and Stefan Themerson are often recognized internationally as pioneers of the 1930s Polish avant-garde. Yet, from the turn of the century to the end of the 1920s, Poland's literary and art scenes were also producing a rich array of criticism and early experiments with the moving image that set the stage for later developments in the avant-garde. In this comprehensive and accessible study, Kamila Kuc draws on myriad undiscovered archival sources to tell the history of early Polish avant-garde movements―Symbolism, Expressionism, Futurism, and Constructivism―and to reveal their impact on later practices in art cinema.

Review
Kuc's ambitious project provides a comprehensive view of Polish avant-garde film before 1945, making a solid contribution to the experimental cinema field of studies and showing how illuminating an account based on sources other than realized films can be for early avant-garde cinema.
― Slavic Review

Kamila Kuc's Visions of Avant-Garde Film is devoted to the beginnings of the Polish film avant-garde. The author of this volume proposes an original perspective, paying attention to phenomena that have not been yet described or that have been so far ignored. Her reflection focuses on the relationship between the film and other areas of the avant-garde. [This] book is not only valuable by filling the gap in the literature devoted to early Polish experimental cinema, but also an original proposal of an 'alternative' cinema history.
― Kwartalnik Filmowy

[E]very chapter [is] a revelation in this still understudied area of Eastern European cinema.
― Canadian Journal of Film Studies

...an important addition to the English-language literature on experimental film in Central and Eastern Europe in the first half of the 20th century.
- Marcin Gizycki