Wielka droga Michała Waszyńskiego, czyli polski film bezpaństwowy
Michał Waszyński's Great Road, or a Polish Stateless Film

Summary/Abstract: The article addresses the issue of production, distribution and reception of the film Wielka droga by Michał Waszyński, as well as the activity of the Film Section operating within the 2nd Corps of the Polish Armed Forces. Based on a contextual analysis of source materials collected during archival research, the political, diplomatic and social background of the film's reception was reconstructed in the realities of post-war Italy. The conclusions from this research shed new light on such issues as film production modes in the conditions of warfare and the undetermined geopolitical status of Poland, the film's entanglement in war and post-war diplomacy, the shaping of the narrative concerning World War II, as well as the formation of film policy in Italy in the late 1940s. All these problems led to the film being excluded from official distribution and, consequently, to its omission in studies on the history of cinema. The article is the result of numerous queries in archives: Archivio Centrale delloStato in Rome, Archivio Revisione Cinematografica della Direzione Generaledel Cinema, located in the Italian Ministry of Culture and Tourism(Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo) in Rome, ArchivioCesare Zavattini in Biblioteca Panizzi in Reggio Emilia, archives of the 2nd Corps of the Polish Armed Forcesand the Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade (SBSK) in the Polish Instituteand the General Sikorski Museum in London, Archives of the Literary Instituteof Culture in Le Mesnil-le-Roi. At this point I would like to express my gratitude to theemployees of these institutions for their kind support duringthe implementation of my research. The article was written as part of the project “Philosovietism inItalian post-fascist film culture”, financed by the National Science Centre under decision numberUMO-2019/32/C/HS2/00536.

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