ALL THESE PARADISES, COMETS AND POLONIAS

The 20th century belonged to film. Both in terms of artistic exploration and in the context of being the most popular form of mass entertainment. For most of that century, film was inextricably linked to the cinema hall. In order to experience the power of moving images, viewers had to leave their homes and go to a specially adapted screening space.

For years, the landscape of cities, towns and even villages was shaped by single-screen cinemas — intimate, often family businesses, building the film identity of local communities. They were not only meeting places, but also spaces that strengthened social bonds and provided unforgettable emotions to successive generations of viewers.

The way in which film was received changed gradually — first due to television, then the video and DVD revolution, and finally under the influence of streaming platforms. Small cinemas began to be replaced by multiplexes, and the times when almost every town in Lower Silesia had its own cinema are gone.

Four artists — Gerard Lebik, Lech Moliński, Kamila Mróz and Jerzy Wypych — will take up the subject of the post-war fate of cinemas through various media: sound, text, installation and photography.

When you look at cinema as a phenomenon that goes beyond the story and the screen, you can also see the technology, the matter, and the multi-sensory experience. It is the light cast by the projector, the sound concealed in the film track, the architecture of the cinema hall, and the physicality of the media on which the moving images are recorded. The exhibition “All These Paradises, Comets, and Polonias” explores the materiality of cinema, looking at its forgotten elements, from analogue image display technologies, through archival reels, to sound and architectural space — everything that gives it life.

Kamila Mróz reaches back to the beginnings of cinema technology, recalling the Crookes tube, a 19th-century invention that indirectly enabled the development of image display technology. The electron beam discovered in these early experiments led to the creation of cathode ray tubes, forming the basis for the first television screens and cinema projectors. Mróz’s artistic object is a variation on this groundbreaking discovery and a reminder that cinema begins with light and physics.

Lech Moliński gives voice to history itself — recorded in everyday scenarios and in the changes that left their mark on the cinemas of Lower Silesia. His fictional short stories “Raj” and “Grażyna” show how film gradually left cinema halls and entered homes — first through television, then VHS, DVD, and finally through streaming. The stories are narrated by Tomasz Orlicz, a legend of Wrocław’s voice-over world. His voice has accompanied viewers since the 1970s, leading them through successive eras of the film medium.

Jerzy Wypych explores the cinema space as an archive of memory. His photographs document cinemas in the region, focusing on details — the walls, seats, projection corridors — in which the emotions of past screenings are recorded. The cinema is not just a place of projection, but a structure that preserves memory.

Gerard Lebik, on the other hand, focuses on sound traces recorded in film. In a work inspired by the 16mm system, which has enabled independent filmmakers to make films since the 1920s, the artist reaches for forgotten film reels. Their sound layers — distorted and transformed by time become the basis for a sound composition that recreates the soundtrack of a film that was never made.

Each of these works reminds us that cinema is not merely a moving image, but also matter — media, devices, light and sound, which together create a film experience.

The exhibition is a preview of the book, All These Paradises, Uprisings and Dawns. About small cinemas of Lower Silesia, by Lech Moliński and Jerzy Wypych to be released in July 2025, published by Wydawnictwo Warstwy.

Curator:
Paweł Bąkowski

Partners:
Dolnośląskie Centrum Filmowe, Wydawnictwo Warstwy, Wrocławski Dom Literatury, Kino Nowe Horyzonty

Technology partner:
QPrint

Media patrons:
Notes Na 6 Tygodni, Pismo Artystyczne Format, Kwartalnik FOTOGRAFIA, TVP Kultura, Miej Miejsce, Radio Wrocław KULTURA, Radio RAM

Visual identification:
Grupa Projektor

Accompanying program:
Aleksandra Tews

Translations:
Christa Conklin

Proofreading:
Monika Wójtowicz

Exhibition realization:
Michał Perucki

This project was co-financed from the budget of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship Government