A Church-State conflict. Jerzy Kawalerowicz's Mother Joan of the Angels and cinematic projections of Catholicism in Władysław Gomułka's Poland

Journal article

Referencing archival sources, movie reviews, secondary sources, and a number of fi lms, this article explores the political controversy that accompanied the domestic release of Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s seminal work Mother Joan of the Angels, which occurred at the time of a major confl ict between the Catholic Church and the party regime in Poland during the 1960s. It also discusses other fi lms attacked by the Polish episcopate for their alleged anti-Catholicism and examines the relationship between the Polish School and Catholicism. I argue that the government offi cials responsible for the movie industry as well as most fi lmmakers steered away from aggressive anti-clericalism and atheist propaganda. By contrast, Polish bishops had no qualms about orchestrating attacks against movies they deemed as anti-Catholic and supported various forms of censorship. In my analysis, the case of Mother Joan of the Angels questions traditional narratives about the Church-State confl ict in People’s Poland and the cultural policies of the communist regime.

Authors: Kunicki, M

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Národní filmový archiv
• Journal: Iluminace
• Volume: 28
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 5-23
• Publication date: 2017-05-01
• Acceptance date: 2017-03-23
• ISSN: 0862-397X