UW Polish Studies Endowment Committee presents the lecture “Women of the People: Serfdom, Female Agency and Film Representation in Poland after 1945” by Dr. Michal Oleszczyk.

One of the 2023’s biggest box offices hits in Polish cinemas was the animated adaptation of Władysław Reymont’s Nobel Prize-winning 1904 novel “The Peasants.” This film offered a new and updated version of the central character of Jagna: a young woman in rural Poland of late 19th century.

A new, folk-oriented turn in historiography and popular culture (exemplified by Paweł Maślona’s “Kos,” and Netflix’s series “1670”) tends to re-evaluate class   relations of the Polish past, which for centuries were based on serfdom. This lecture will look at several representations of Polish working-class women of rural origins (“chłopki”) in post-war Polish films and connect them to the latest trends in literature, film, and popular arts.

Michał Oleszczyk, Ph.D. is a film critic, script consultant, author of the podcast SpoilerMaster, and recipient of several accolades and prizes. He contributed to RogerEbert.com and Slant Magazine. From 2013 to 2017, he served as the artistic director of the Gdynia Film Festival. He is an Assistant Professor at Artes Liberales Department of University of Warsaw and teaches Script Development at the Warsaw Film School.

This lecture is sponsored by The Maria Kott Endowed Professorship of Polish Studies and the UW PSEC

The lecture is at Savery Hall, room 264 on the UW campus in Seattle. The lecture is free and open to the public.

More: about Michal Oleszczyk