Ostry film zaangażowany

It is symptomatic that during the XX edition of The Krakow Short Film Festival (National competition) in May and June 1980 an animated film – for the first time in the history of the contest – won the prize alone. Not a document, as it was eighteen times before (in 1967 the animated ‘Horse’ by Witold Giersz received first place along with Irena Kamieńska’s document ‘Good Morning, Children’), not a feature etude, but an animation. The jury under the direction of Jerzy Hoffman awarded the film ‘A Hard-Core Engaged Film. Non-Camera’ (1979) by Julian Józef Antonisz the Golden Hobby Horse prize. It is a story full of pure nonsense humour about a sly and sneaky retired woman who brought about the shutdown of old sales booths decorated with posters, which was the cause of the decline of the national cultural life. ‘Now the town is empty, Folks stay indoors / They miss out on films, of which they don't know’ – sang Janina Jaskólska, the cleaning lady from Cracow’s Animated Film Studio, in the film ‘A Hard-Core Engaged Film. Non-Camera’. It seems that Antonisz accurately lay out the degree of ‘sharpness’ and ‘engagement’ possible to publicly diffuse at that time. In this sense it became a kind of document of the period. Jerzy Armata '1981 - 1990: Przerwana dekada' in: 'Polski Film Animowany', editors Marcin Giżycki, Bogusław Zmudziński, Warszawa: Polskie Wydawnictwo Audiowizualne, 2008, page 78-79