Built in the early 1950s upon the ruins of Warsaw’s Jewish quarter, the Cinema Muranów has lived through Poland’s tumultuous history. Before bestowing its name upon a movie theatre, Muranów was a neighbourhood in Warsaw. Born in the 18th century out of the legendary love story between an architect from Murano and a Polish woman who built a castle there, the neighborhood later welcomed Jewish immigrants whose presence in the area dates back more than 1,000 years. When the cinematograph arrived in Warsaw in 1896, the production of Polish films began and would soon flourish in this district. From its inception, female actors and producers would play a prominent role. The Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, the construction of the ghetto and bombing destroyed life and the city, resulting in nearly all the films vanishing in the flames. The neighbourhood of Muranów and its cinema rose from these very ashes. A venue for art, experimentation and resistance from its very beginning, the Muranów has incarnated the spirit offreedom that has breathed life into Polish cinematographic creation for over a century. The Muranów will always stand at the forefront of the “Polish School” of filmmaking of the 1950s, and later, the cinema of moral anxiety of the 1970s and 1980s. In July 1961, a young Frenchman passing through Muranów happened to meet a young Polish woman. Sixty-two years later, the two lovebirds are still together: they are my parents. Their story – and therefore mine – is woven into the fabric of my film. In my eyes, this young Polish woman embodies the place women hold in Polish cinema: determined, rebellious, courageous. Through its bold programming, the Muranów has championed – and continues to champion – women, and phantoms of the past.

Olga Prud’homme Farges