Przemieszczona tożsamość. Kino PRL wobec problemu Ziem Zachodnich
Displaced Identity: PRL Cinema and the Problem of the Western Territories

Summary/Abstract: The article addresses the problem of “displaced identity” understood as a top-down national and social project for post-Yalta spaces. Although its aim was national homogenization and integration within new geographical and political boundaries, the project actually triggered a crisis of belonging and identification, inherited by subsequent generations of post-war inhabitants of the new territories. The study is devoted to Polish feature films from 1956-1970 which can be said to refer to displaced identity and whose role in the reception of the “Recovered [Western] Territories” was significant. By addressing the topics of migration, settlement, and the development of new areas, they essentially influenced the collective imagination. The film analyses are accompanied by considerations on the role of cinema in the processes of shaping mono-ethnicity, as well as on the scope of political ideas, everyday life, adaptation problems, and social conflicts depicted in the films. The research is intended to complement the existing knowledge on the history of cinema in the Polish People’s Republic (PRL), as well as its political and socio-cultural contexts related to the issue of the Western Territories.

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