Szulkin, Piotr

(1950-)

   Piotr Szulkin began his career with several short television films, such as Working Women (Kobiety pracujące, 1978), and gained prominence for a series of painfully contemporary science fiction films produced at the beginning of the 1980s. His dystopian Golem (1980), based on Gustav Meyrink's writings and the Golem legend, describes the problem of dehu-manization and portrays an animal-like existence in a futuristic postnuclear world. Golem's cold beauty of painterly images (cinematography by Zygmunt Samosiuk) is repeated in Szulkin's next film, War of the Worlds: Next Century (Wojna światów: Następne stulecie, 1981, released in 1983). Dedicated to H. G. Wells and Orson Welles, the film depicts another futuristic society during the landing of the Martians. Due to obvious parallels between the film's images and its Polish political context, it was banned after the introduction of martial law. The issues of manipulation by the "system" appeared also in Szulkin's next films: O-bi, O-ba: End of Civilization (O-bi, o-ba. Koniec cywilizacji, 1984) and Ga, Ga: Glory to the Heroes (Ga, ga. Chwała bohaterom, 1986). In his later film, Femina (1991), Szulkin mocked the emptiness of political and religious rituals and debunked the ritual aspect of Polish culture and its martyrlike character.

   Other films: Ubu, the King (Ubu Król, 2003).

   Historical Dictionary of Polish Cinema by Marek Haltof