Past Century, Present Frame

Since 2000, the biopic has become one of the most significant genres in Polish cinema. Past Century, Present Frame examines this phenomenon and explores how Polish filmmakers repeatedly draw on the past to address the present. Adopting a culture-oriented approach to film studies, it treats the biopic not as a simple reconstruction of a life, but as a mode of interpreting history that shapes collective memory, social identity, and the historical imagination. The volume opens with an exploration of the genre's narrative and cultural foundations and locates the contemporary boom within the broader tradition of Polish biographical cinema. The subsequent chapters analyze biopics devoted to national heroes, politicians, religious figures, artists, musicians, athletes, and individuals who fall outside the official canon of memory. Particular attention is paid to the interplay between biopics, the politics of memory, social change, and formal as well as transnational experimentation. The book argues that the contemporary Polish biopic increasingly moves beyond monumental narratives toward stories centered on everyday life, individual experience, and the media-driven construction of identity.