Urszula Antoniak: kondycja nomadki
Urszula Antoniak: the Condition of the Nomad

Summary/Abstract: If a national perspective in the study of Polish cinema turns out to be the most appropriate to describe its identity making role in the 20th century, a different perspective, one that transcends national borders, appears to be more promising when dealing with newest films. The definition of what it means to be Polish is changing in part due to mass migration. One of the better known Polish women directors working abroad is Urszula Antoniak. Although she graduated from the Silesian University in Katowice, she made her debut only following emigration to the Netherlands, where she made three feature films. In interviews she highlights her status of an outsider, and her film stories consistently focus on the problem of loneliness and the impossibility of communicating with another person. In his article Szponar is trying to answer the question dealing with not so much the issue of transnationalism, but “un-nationalism”, that is uprooting as an element of the human condition of the 21st century. This point of view is further explored using the feminist perspective, and the notion of womanhood as being “an escape from the world”. The work of Urszula Antoniak falls within the category of “women’s films”, and coincidentally agrees with the words of Virginia Woolf, who wrote: “As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world”.

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