The article presents two dimensions of the relationship between cinema and Polish independence. The first part was devoted to the situation of Polish cinema after 1918. I describe the film market, the political situation, relationship between the state and cinematography, films that were then created and their impact on national identity. Then I focus on films in which independence has become a movie theme. I divide them into three periods: until 1939, the People's Republic of Poland and after 1989. I draw attention to their political and historical contexts, functions and film form, and I discuss the meaning and interpretation of each films.

The article La Rilettura del romanzo Il fu Mattia Pascal di Luigi Pirandello nell’otica del racconto cinematografico di Mario Monicelli, presents an individual story of Mattia Pascal and his reincarnations in Adriano Meis and the late Mattia Pascal. It concentrates on the journey of the main character, in the original dimension of time and space, in search of a new, happy life and of his identity. In reference to the subject matter included here, various different theories are applied to the cinematic analysis of the ‘new’ work of Pirandello.

Between Expressionism and Sperimentalism: Mario Monicelli and Pasquale Festa Campanile – The purpose of this study is to focus on the phenomenon of linguistic experimentalism in Italian cinema and to analyse the languages appearing in four films: medieval Italian, a mixture of Italian dialects, Latin and barbaric languages, in “The Incredible Army of Brancaleone” and “Brancaleone at the Crusades” (directed by M. Monicelli) as well as the prehistoric language in such films as “When Women Had Tails” and “When Women Lost Their Tails” (directed by P. Festa Campanile).

Narrative synergies – Christ stopped at Eboli: The writing of Carlo Levi in the view of Francesco Rosi – In Christ Stopped at Eboli, Carlo Levi recounts his confinement in a recondite village of southern Italy, in an archaic world, by which he remains completely fascinated. In 1978, the director Francesco Rosi, adapting the documentary structure to the lyric moments of the literary text, offers us a wonderful film re-creation in which the intense autobiographical story of the anti-fascist writer intersects with geographical space at a historical moment crucial to Italy.

The presence of the Bible in the movies is a complex reality: besides direct interpretations of the stories from the Holy Scriptures, a number of films has been inspired by other cultural sources (passion-plays, arts, literature, music, other films). By reason of its subject and its non-religious origin, a biblical film is important for theologians: numerous audiovisual adaptations of the Gospel have raised the issues of the faithfulness of this particular kind of translation (transmediatization) of the Bible. A particular attention should be paid to Jesus-movies because of their impact on the audiences and very different ways of portraying of Jesus (from a relatively simple „historical" Jesus till elaborated Christ-figures).

The title-opposition of the world of friends and of foes is the result of geopolitical strategies which defi ned the status of Poland in the twentieth-century history of the continent, the history full of crises. Several variants of the phenomenon can be distinguished: Revolution as anti-Christian and anti-Polish world; Revolution as a world of progress and the struggle for peace and internationalist order, Revolution as the work of Lenin, Revolution as a perpetrator of Polish independence and Revolution as one of the endless painful experiences of the Twentieth Century.

This article describes the results of the pilot stage of qualitative fi eld research on Russian social memory in the second half of the 1980s. The aim of the research was to reveal what is the image of perestroika preserved in today’s social memory of those Russians who remember the events of those years. The main objective of the pilot stage was the identifi cation of the lexicon of terms and the set of concepts used to verbalize the memories of the perestroika period, as well as the caesuras and temporal characteristics related to the memory of this time. The results are outlined in the main topics, terms and concepts that pop up in conversations with respondents.

Stefan Grabiński, a famous Polish author of weird fiction, who is known especially for his collection of short stories Demon ruchu (The Motion Demon, 1919), lived and worked in a period marked by a new artistic style – expressionism. Although Grabiński came from Lviv, often regarded as a province in Poland after the Great War, he could have a contact with the latest ideas concerning art and philosophy. Indeed, both in his short stories and in his novels may be found some traits typical for the expressionist poetics as, for example, a subjective perspective, a color sensitivity or a tendency to violent and dynamic use of formal elements. Grabiński was fascinated by a German literature – he read Gustav Meyrink, E.T.A. Hoffmann and an expressionist magazine “Der Orchideengarten”. Moreover, he liked going to the cinema where he could watch, for example, a famous German expressionist film – The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The only text by Grabiński which was adapted into film in his life was a short story Kochanka Szamoty (Szamota’s Mistress, 1922). Although this seemed to be a great material for an expressionist film, the director – Leon Trystan – decided to realize it in an impressionist poetics.

Professor architect Juliusz Żórawski (1898–1967) is presented in this memorial text by one of his close pupils and collaborators. The author describes the air of lectures on architectural design given by Żórawski, and the mood prevailing in the chair headed by Professor at the Faculty of Architecture of the Cracow University of Technology during the first 20 years after the WW II. The case of the city house in Warsaw built in 1937 proves the avant-garde role of Żórawski in the Polish architecture between the two wars. The original text prepared in 1968 is published here for the first time.

The paper discusses Jerzy Passendorfer’s Day of Exculpation as movie about Polish-Soviet brotherhood of arms. By learning the history of its production and comparing various versions of its screenplay, shooting script and the fi lm itself one can see contexts and ways of creating an image of Polish-Soviet relations.