Behind the Poster

The "Polish Poster School" is as widely known around the world as the Polish Film School. Beginning with the post-World War II era, the poster became a key tool for popular communication. In Communist times, the poster also offered colorful accents to an otherwise overwhelmingly gray public space. Ironically, during the 1950s, '60s and '70s (when several Polish graphic designers rose to worldwide prominence), the advertising of films was not a necessity. A frustrated and hopeless populace regularly relied on cinema for escape. It was in that time of massive unrest that artists like Julian Pałka, Jan Lenica, Roman Cieślewicz and Henryk Tomaszewski created the most expressive and unique images of the form. Marcin Latałło's lauded documentary film is a double-layered construction, telling both the story of the movement and, in parallel, following the footsteps of Ania, a young designer who faces an extremely tricky challenge: she must create a poster for the film itself.