Wytwórnia Filmów Dokumentalnych

An experimental short film by Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica.

Partly thriller, partly dark comedy, the tagline of this film announce that any resemblance to real-life characters and situations were completely intentional. This had the audience guessing who the main characters were supposed to represent: those biznismeni and post-socialist yuppies who after 1989 teamed up with their former enemies to exploit Poland ruthlessly.

The final oral exam in history and social studies at one of Warsaw's high schools. The film illustrates the theatre of social life in Soviet Poland where one says different things on the stage and another behind the scenes.

The photographs of a member of the Gestapo, with narration from the captions he left in his album. Film released in 1964.

Each day of the week is represented by a ballerina beginning with a young child and ending with an older ballet teacher.

At the time of the Polish social regime, a security officer is promoted to work at a prison yard. Introducing concurrently with the narrator; he speaks of himself, his thoughts, his point of view.

The protagonist of this documentary is Gdańsk and its history. The story begins on the shore of the Baltic Sea, in a Pomeranian town on the European Amber Road. It ends in the contemporary Gdańsk Shipyard.

Piwowski's documentary debut is a satirical reportage, referring to the poetics of the Czech school at the time. The starting point was an order from a film studio to join a project proposed by the Germans: what do teenagers in your country do on Saturday at 5 pm? Images from the lives of teenagers from Kętrzyn make up a contrasting slice of free time in a small town. Firemen maneuvering to start a fire outside working hours, bodybuilders training, choir rehearsal, dancing in Hitler's former headquarters...

A portrait of a traveling circus.

On the cusp of adulthood and in search of work qualifications and a better life, Franciszek Wróbel - a baker from a small village on the Czech border of south-western Poland - emigrates to industrial Silesia to join the Voluntary Labour Corps. There he is chosen from all of the applicants to write a diary of his experiences and daily life. Between his vocational courses and training, he struggles to make friends, pass his exams, and maintain relationships with girls.

24 hours in the life of a hospital from the point of view of the doctors and nurses.

Documentary about the beginning of Solidarnosc.

An orchestra of working-class musicians rehearses in this short film, honored at the 1960 Venice Film Festival and among the favorite films of director Krzysztof Kieslowski who mentored under this documentary's director.

A documentary revolving around the Polish situation on an industrial level at the tail-end of the 1960s: it alternates between stark images at a metallurgic foundry and a board-room meeting among the various executives involved in its management.

This film describes the Second World Congress of Peace Defenders, held in Warsaw on November 16-22, 1950. Sheffield, an industrial city in England, was the initial location of the event, however, it was transferred to the capital of Poland at the very last moment.

Impressionistic study of the fate of a stray dog, trying to avoid the results of human indifference and cruelty.

A street poll about contemporary youth. The answers are engineered to show the manipulation of propaganda and television.

Modern work tools are created thanks to the development of science, as a result of the transfer of knowledge between generations. A review of the tradition of Polish science from the times of Nicolaus Copernicus to the establishment of the Polish Academy of Sciences. [35mm online]