CZLOWIEK Z MARMURU
Reflecting director Wajda's emerging hostility to the Stalinist cultural establishment and its oppressive restrictions on artistic expression, he focuses on a propaganda hero from the 1950s who later fell out of favour and disappeared.
In repressive mid-1970s Poland, documentary filmmaker Agnieszka (Krystyna Janda) begins work on a film about Mateusz Birkut (Jerzy Radziwiłowicz), a bricklayer who had briefly been hailed as a hero of the proletariat in the 1950s, but then disappeared into obscurity. In piecing together details about the bricklayer's mysterious life, she discovers that his involvement in organised labour had been viewed negatively by party bosses, and that her own investigations could put her in danger. ‘Man of Marble’ (named after the state created marble statues of Birkut, used for propaganda) challenged the Communist authorities and their glorious portrayal of the past, and as a result Wajda’s humanistic film was delayed a release for four years. (Subtitles)
Poland 1977 Andrzej Wajda 160m
