Bajecznie egzotyczne Polesie? Reportaż z krainy tęsknych pieśni Maksymiliana Emmera w perspektywie ekokrytycznej
Fabulously Exotic Polesie? Reportage from the Land of Yearning Songs by Maksymilian Emmer in an Ecocritical Perspective

Summary/Abstract: In 1936, a Polish short documentary Polesie directed by Maksymilian Emmer was awarded the silver medal at the Venice International Film Festival. The judges, as well as Polish film critics, praised work of the camera operator Jerzy Maliniak, particularly in landscape scenes. Among the critics, however, there were some controversies regarding the authenticity of how Polesie was portrayed. Some of them asserted that the movie was free from the idyllic convention, while the others thought that producers deliberately avoided showing what life really looked like in the poorest and most neglected areas of the country. The alleged primaveral character of nature in Polesie, as shown in the film, may also be challenged in the light of recent findings in the field of environmental history studies. The article argues that while Emmer and Maliniak did not show the real living conditions of indigenous population quite deliberately, they failed to recognize the real condition of local nature being lured by the common myth of fabulously exotic Polesie that thrived in Poland in interwar period.

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