We Want the Sun! Short Films by Łódź Students from the Global South

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

The chapter examines how scholarship students from the Global South at the Łódź Film School absorbed and transformed models of Polish art cinema between the late 1950s and the 1990s. The school’s founding faculty, veterans of the prewar START group, promoted social realism. Later, instructors like Wojciech Has and Wanda Jakubowska became pivotal influences. Has’s oneiric, atmospheric style inspired a corpus of student shorts nicknamed hasówki, which often explore death, memory, and passage between waking and sleeping. Examples include Shadows (1982), Miriam (1984), Top Floor (1980), and Born in Chains (1983)—the last importing issues of racial discrimination into Polish cinema. A second group, made under Jakubowska, engages directly with political themes: colonial wars, student protests, and Third Cinema. Key films include But Still, It’s a Pity… (1971), Guerrilla (1966), Without Requiem (1969), and The Cat Died of Hunger (1968). The only feature-length diploma by a Global South student, Kaweh Pur Rahnama’s No Way Back, Johnny (1971), tackles the Vietnam War from a humanitarian perspective. The chapter concludes with the Barua brothers, Jakub and Stan, whose shorts fuse Has’s poetic idiom with political reflection on postcolonialism, notably in Sabou (1990) and The Welcome (1990). The essay argues that these student works created a transnational variant of Third Cinema, enriching Polish film culture with non‑Slavic protagonists, echoes of global student revolts, and postcolonial critique.

Key Events

Arrival of Global South students at Łódź begins in the late 1950s under START-generation educators.
Wojciech Has teaches directing from 1974; his influence produces over 200 hasówki shorts.
Beverly Joan Marcus and Eduardo Coronado Quiroga make Shadows, an oneiric story of an old man recalling lost love.
Djamel Benkhaled adapts Truman Capote’s Miriam, blending childhood and mortality.
JAM Karanja’s Born in Chains uses snow and chains to visualize racial imprisonment.
Idriss Karim’s Song for the Deaths of the Young features a protest choir demanding “We want the sun!” and links to the 1968 student revolts and Jan Palach’s self‑immolation.
Roland Paret’s But Still, It’s a Pity… depicts a journalist whose career is destroyed after writing about Pushkin’s death.
José Luis di Zeo’s Guerrilla shows partisans executing a soldier in Argentina.
Raul Saucedo Zermeño’s Without Requiem protests the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre; its graffiti is mistaken by Polish authorities for Zionist slogans.
José María Sánchez Ariza’s The Cat Died of Hunger illustrates Glauber Rocha’s “Aesthetics of Hunger.”
Kaweh Pur Rahnama directs No Way Back, Johnny, the only feature‑length diploma by a Global South student, about a GI and a Viet Cong suspect handcuffed together in the jungle.
Jakub Barua’s Sabou and The Welcome explore colonial relations and the Barua brothers’ bicultural identity, using Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

Character Development

The chapter focuses on filmmakers rather than fictional characters. Key figures include:

Wojciech Has – His oneiric, atmospheric directing style becomes a model for student shorts, especially those dealing with death and memory.
Wanda Jakubowska – She mentors politically engaged shorts, especially those addressing colonialism and student revolts.
Kaweh Pur Rahnama – An Iranian political refugee; his transition from documentary shorts to a feature about the Vietnam War shows his ambition and the institutional barriers faced by international students.
Jakub Barua and Stan Barua – These brothers, children of a Kenyan father and Polish mother, synthesize Has’s poetic idiom and political critique, contributing a reflective postcolonial perspective.
José Luis di Zeo – An Argentine student who brings Third Cinema aesthetics into his Polish‑produced shorts, such as Guerrilla and Wake.
Idriss Karim – His musical short Song for the Deaths of the Young directly channels the spirit of 1968 protests and anti‑government sentiment.

These individuals adapt Polish models to their own cultural and political sensitivities, enriching both Polish cinema and their own national film cultures.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

Death and the passage between states – A central motif in hasówki: protagonists meet younger selves, drift between past and future, waking and sleeping. Examples include Shadows, Miriam, Top Floor, and Aleksander.
Chains and imprisonment – In Born in Chains, chains hidden beneath snow symbolize inherited racial oppression. In No Way Back, Johnny, the handcuffs binding GI and Viet Cong soldier represent shared humanity amid conflict.
The sun as freedom and protest – The title “We Want the Sun!” echoes the May 1968 Paris slogan “Under the paving stones, the beach”; it appears in Karim’s film as a banner carried by demonstrators.
Hunger as aesthetic and political statement – Glauber Rocha’s “Aesthetics of Hunger” is directly invoked in The Cat Died of Hunger, where a family kills their cat for food, contrasting with European perceptions of poverty.
Surrealism and political critique – Films like About‑Face and Hibernatus use absurd humor to attack social pressure, state surveillance, and political violence.
Mirroring and dissociation – Top Floor uses double‑mirror reflections to link a poet’s mental state with Has’s doppelgänger motifs.
Graffiti and public slogans – In Without Requiem, the student’s painted slogans are misread by Polish authorities as “Zionist,” illustrating the gap between Third Cinema and Eastern bloc political culture.

Why This Chapter Matters

This chapter rescues from obscurity a body of student films that challenged the monoethnic, contained nature of late socialist Polish cinema. It demonstrates how the Łódź Film School became a rare site of cultural exchange between the Eastern bloc and the decolonizing Global South. The analysis shows that these shorts were not mere imitations of Polish models but actively created a transnational variant of Third Cinema, injecting non‑Slavic protagonists, echoes of 1968 protests, and postcolonial perspectives into Polish film culture. The chapter also highlights the institutional barriers—censorship, anti‑Semitic purges, and lack of access to feature production—that Global South students faced. By documenting the work of key figures like Kaweh Pur Rahnama, José Luis di Zeo, and the Barua brothers, Talarczyk enriches understanding of both Polish cinema history and the global reach of Third Cinema’s aesthetics and politics.

Study Questions and Answers

How did Wojciech Has’s filmmaking style shape the student shorts known as hasówki?
Has’s oneiric, atmospheric, and visional approach provided a model for shorts that explore death, memory, and the passage between waking and sleeping. Students adapted literary texts as raw material, minimized dialogue, and focused on mood. Common motifs include old protagonists meeting younger selves, ticking clocks, and mirrors that reflect dissociation. Examples include Shadows and Top Floor.
In what ways did student shorts from the Global South introduce new political themes into Polish cinema?
These films brought non‑European protagonists and postcolonial or revolutionary concerns. Born in Chains visualized racial imprisonment. Guerrilla and Without Requiem directly referenced Latin American military regimes and the Tlatelolco Massacre. The Cat Died of Hunger aligned with Glauber Rocha’s “Aesthetics of Hunger.” No Way Back, Johnny offered an anti‑war perspective on the Vietnam War from the viewpoint of both a GI and a Viet Cong suspect.
What does the chapter reveal about the institutional limitations faced by Global South students at the Łódź Film School?
Feature‑length diplomas were reserved for Polish students, so Kaweh Pur Rahnama had to secure special permission from the deputy minister to make No Way Back, Johnny. The school’s authorities misread anti‑government graffiti from Without Requiem as Zionist slogans, revealing a lack of awareness of Third Cinema. The political purges of 1968 led to the dismissal of several START‑generation faculty, disrupting the support system for international students.