Chapter 21: The Familiar, the Strange – Global South Student Documentaries at the Łódź Film School

⚠️ 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

Theoretical Framework

Chapter 21 opens with the dichotomy of familiarity and strangeness drawn from migration researcher Ewa Nowicka. The author, Katarzyna Mąka-Malatyńska, argues that student films made by foreigners at the Łódź Film School allow a revaluation of symbols in Polish cinema and help deconstruct the stereotype of a purely national cinema. She proposes viewing these works through similarity and dissimilarity—what is familiar and what is unfamiliar to common perceptions of Polish film and society.

Chronological Survey of Films by Topic

The chapter groups films thematically, starting with the earliest surviving works from the early 1960s to around 1990.

Workers and Marginalized People:
Many student films focus on working-class lives in Łódź, a recurring setting. Eduardo Coronado Quiroga's The Prologue (1979) juxtaposes palaces and courtyards with voice-overs from overseas students, calling Łódź "a film shot from a tram’s windows." Idriss Karim's Marta (1969) depicts a female textile worker married to an alcoholic, with the drone of looms echoing her monotonous existence. Karim's later Elżbieta K. (1973) follows a similar observational method under supervisor Kazimierz Karabasz. Syed Ali Haider Rizvi's Marek (1978) and Saer Mussa's Buy a Newspaper (early 1980s) continue that style, with Mussa creatively mixing black-and-white and color film stock to reflect a teenage newspaper seller's separate realities. Films like Hamid Bensaïd's Pensioners' House (1969) and Laredj Khader's The Family (1982) focus on community rather than an individual hero, diagnosing social phenomena with an accusatory tone.

Roma Stigmatization:
Bensaïd's Zofia and Ludmiła (1971) records daily life for two Roma girls. The film uses contrast: joyful family scenes with Romani music versus school scenes where teachers and pupils stigmatize the silent girls. The author notes that while the topic of Roma life had appeared earlier in Polish documentary, Bensaïd's language differs by employing New Change aesthetics, using school as a model of society reflecting dominant "not-one-of-us" relations.

Polish Culture and Religiosity:
Several films record theater performances, such as Quiroga's Chronica anonyma (1980) documenting the Kraków cellar club Piwnica pod Baranami, with its structure built around mysterious music. Rolando Loewenstein's Gdańsk (1978) is a more conventional sightseeing film. Religiosity appears in films about monastery life (Raul Saucedo Zermeño's Mea culpa, 1968) and Juan Caicedo's In claro monti (1987) focusing on Holy Thursday rituals at Jasna Góra. Mostafa Derkaoui's Cellar People (1969) and Somewhere, Someday (1971) stand out for entering Polish culture from inside, capturing intellectual conversations in a Warsaw jazz club with a narrative structure resembling jazz improvisation.

History and the Holocaust:
The earliest documentary about Auschwitz from a foreign student is José Luis di Zeo's Letter to the Children (1964), composed entirely of photographs—an approach similar to experiments by Kazimierz Karabasz. Juan Caicedo's De profundis Psalm 88 (1984) shows the Jewish cemetery in Łódź as a forgotten, snow-covered place where no one places pebbles anymore. The chapter highlights Beverly Joan Marcus's Patrik (1979), where ANC activist Patrik Mabinda visits Auschwitz-Birkenau; the camp becomes a symbol of violence against any otherness, closely tied to apartheid. Marcus's film changes the perspective of viewing earlier documentaries about excluded people.

Foreign Students’ Experience:
Djamel Benkhaled's Anthropology (1982) critiques race research by showing body parts being measured while participants question the scientists. Earlier films like Foreign Students in Łódź (1961) by Abdul Khalik and Lesson 41 (1966) by Abdellah Drissi hide the filmmakers' ethnic diversity, focusing on cheerful language learning. Fayçal Hassaïri's Reserved for Foreigners (1988) is more critical, showing scholarship students' isolation in a separate dormitory and their longing for letters from home. Mostafa Derkaoui's The Adoption (1968) subtly critiques relations between Poles and foreigners through a couple rejecting a mixed-race child, Agnieszka, whose mother gave her up after marrying a Pole.

Mixed-Ethnicity Relationships:
From the early 1980s, films more boldly address relations between Poles and non-Poles. Marcus's Wait, Wait (1980) portrays a young couple with a child in a cramped dormitory, highlighting lack of communication and loneliness, though cultural differences are not explicitly indicated. Abdesselam Mezerreg's What Next (1982) shows an expectant mother's fears and her husband's distance, with the protagonist's difference exposed through photos and a black rag doll. Hassaïri's North-South (1990) reveals cultural and religious conflicts in a mixed marriage, with the grandmother expressing prejudiced views about Muslims and Slavs as "the best breed." Laredj Khader's Beloved Father (1983) is a personal film about a boy whose father left Poland for Algeria; it contrasts gray Polish autumn with warm Algerian sunshine.

Films Made Outside Poland:
Some students returned to their home countries to make films. Rupen Vosgimorukian's Report: September 1969 (1970) documents a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan with shocking footage and an accusatory tone. Leonardo Palleja's Traces (1989) focuses on a Nicaraguan student's family story and his father's death in guerrilla warfare, blending personal monologue with archival footage.

Concluding Analysis

The author argues that the specificity of these films arises from sustained tension between similarity and difference. While looking at them as manifesting transnational character in Polish national cinema risks Eurocentrism, the presence of these filmmakers enriches a monoethnic culture. The chapter concludes with Georg Simmel's idea that the category of strangeness, as a component of interaction, carries a positive connotation, and that these documentaries reflect the metamorphoses of Polish society more strongly than their fictional counterparts.

Key Events

Idriss Karim's Marta (1969): Presents a long day in the life of a female textile worker, showing the monotony of factory, shopping lines, and domestic chores against an alcoholic husband.
Hamid Bensaïd's Zofia and Ludmiła (1971): Records two Roma girls' joyful home life versus stigmatizing school scenes; the girls remain largely silent while classmates repeat negative opinions.
Mostafa Derkaoui's Cellar People (1969): Captures improvisational conversations and jazz at the Kurylewicz Arts Club, with a fragmented structure mimicking musical improvisation.
José Luis di Zeo's Letter to the Children (1964): Uses photographs from the Holocaust, including Stroop's report and Auschwitz images, with a title card about Rudolf Höss's last letter to his children.
Beverly Joan Marcus's Patrik (1979): Shows ANC activist Patrik Mabinda at Auschwitz-Birkenau; his voice-over connects the camp's symbolism to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.
Mostafa Derkaoui's The Adoption (1968): A couple visiting an orphanage rejects a mixed-race girl, Agnieszka, after learning her mother was Polish and her father Kenyan.
Fayçal Hassaïri's North-South (1990): A Polish grandmother expresses prejudice against her daughter's Muslim husband; final credits reveal the daughter left for Kuwait with the Red Cross.
Laredj Khader's Beloved Father (1983): A boy in Poland corresponds with his engineer father in Algeria, with visual contrasts between gray Łódź and sunny Algeria.
Rupen Vosgimorukian's Report: September 1969 (1970): Filmed in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, with a subject shouting "Show the world that the Palestinian people have been turned into beggars."

Character Development

The chapter treats documentary protagonists as carefully observed characters shaped by their environments. Marta embodies endurance within a patriarchal, duty-bound existence—her face rarely shows emotion, but her routines speak of resilience. Zofia and Ludmiła are portrayed with vitality at home but silenced and shamed at school, their joy contrasting with the static faces of their peers. Patrik Mabinda undergoes a symbolic transformation: Auschwitz becomes not a tourist site but an intimate experience that expands to represent all violence against otherness. The mixed-race child Agnieszka is a passive victim, rejected twice without speaking. The foreign students in Reserved for Foreigners show progressive isolation: they start as hopeful language learners but end up closing into ethnic groups. The Polish mothers in Wait, Wait and What Next display frustration and loneliness that transcend but are complicated by cultural difference. Each character reveals a layer of Polish society's attitudes toward strangers.

Themes, Symbols, and Motifs

Familiar vs. Strange: The central dichotomy. Films make Polish society appear strange to foreign filmmakers while also making the familiar—workers, Roma, religious rituals—visible in new ways.
Observation versus Intervention: The observational method of Kazimierz Karabasz dominates, but some films (e.g., Cellar People, Patrik) introduce performative or autobiographical elements.
Marginalization and Voice: Repeated motif of people who are silenced—Roma girls, mixed-race children, female workers, scholarship students—given a platform through documentary.
Symbolism of Places: Łódź as gray, monotonous; Auschwitz as a symbol of violence expanded to global oppression; the Jewish cemetery as forgotten memory.
Language and Communication: Films about language learning (Lesson 41, Foreign Students in Łódź) treat linguistics as a gateway to culture, while films about mixed marriages show failure or absence of communication.
Contrasts in Visual Style: Black-and-white vs. color (Buy a Newspaper), diegetic vs. non-diegetic sound (Chronica anonyma), staged vs. observational shots.
Transnational Gaze: The filmmakers bring an outside perspective that de-centers mainstream Polish film narrative and reveals Eurocentric assumptions.

Why This Chapter Matters

This chapter offers a crucial corrective to the conventional history of Polish documentary cinema by foregrounding the contributions of international students. It demonstrates that these filmmakers were not passive learners but active participants who adapted Polish documentary language to express their own concerns, from social critique to personal trauma. The chapter uncovers a hidden archive (student films often unavailable or overlooked) that challenges the notion of a "purely national cinema." It shows how the "strange" can enrich the "familiar" by making visible the multiethnic realities of postwar Poland. For film scholars, it provides a methodological model for studying similarity and difference in transnational film production. For general readers, it reveals how foreign eyes can see a society more clearly than its own citizens might.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the author use the concepts of familiarity and strangeness to frame the analysis of student documentaries?
The author applies Ewa Nowicka's categories of closeness (acceptance, belief in similarity) and strangeness (lack of those values) to examine films made by foreign students. She argues that these categories appear at different structural levels than in Polish films. For example, Bensaïd's Zofia and Ludmiła makes the Polish classroom unfamiliar by showing how the majority stigmatizes two Roma girls, while the girls’ home life appears familiar through its joy. The films reveal what Poles might not see: the "not-one-of-us" relations that shape society. The author concludes that strangeness, per Simmel, is a positive component of interaction that enriches understanding.

2. What role does the filmmaking tradition of Kazimierz Karabasz play in shaping the work of Global South students?
Karabasz's observational method, based on patient long-term observation and off-screen monologue (as in Rok Franka W.), is directly adopted by students like Idriss Karim (under Karabasz's supervision) in Marta and Elżbieta K., and by Syed Ali Haider Rizvi in Marek. Saer Mussa's Buy a Newspaper varies the formula by using black-and-white and color stock to reflect the protagonist's dual realities. Hamid Bensaïd's Zofia and Ludmiła uses the observational framework but combines it with New Change aesthetics. Karabasz's influence also appears in di Zeo's Letter to the Children, which uses photographs—a technique Karabasz was exploring. Thus, the Polish school's master-apprentice relationship directly shaped the form of these student documentaries.

3. How do films about mixed-ethnicity relationships critique Polish society of the PRL era?
Films from the 1980s like North-South, What Next, and Beloved Father expose deep-seated prejudices and failed adaptation. North-South features a grandmother who believes "Slavs are the best breed" and that Muslims become fanatics after 35, while the grandchildren are taken to church. What Next shows a husband's distant behavior not necessarily due to ethnicity but the film highlights difference through objects like a black rag doll. The Adoption (1968) more subtly critiques by having a couple reject a mixed-race toddler. These films, made under looser censorship, articulate the isolation, loneliness, and rejection that foreign students and their families experienced, contradicting the official propaganda of socialist internationalism. The chapter notes that the critical tone intensified as the 1980s progressed.