Peer-reviewed articles by Iwona Gusc
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Once they settled in the Netherlands Polish veterans seemed to perceive their new fatherland as a... more Once they settled in the Netherlands Polish veterans seemed to perceive their new fatherland as a friendly enviroment. They felt accepted and welcome at first. As time went by more and more veterans realised they have difficulty in communicating their war to the Dutch society. They felt being left aside and forgotten. They started as honorary citizens and ended as forgotten liberators.
This article aims to explain when, how and why this shift took place and what historical and sociological factors were responsible for this change. It also looks at the way Polish veterans used their own war narratives and how their commemoration practices clashed with the dominant Dutch war remembrance culture.
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Article co-authored with Kris Van Heuckelom (University of Leuven)
Van Heuckelom, K. & Guść I., ‘... more Article co-authored with Kris Van Heuckelom (University of Leuven)
Van Heuckelom, K. & Guść I., ‘Songs of Home (and Away). Ethnically Coded Diegetic and multidirectional nostalgia in fiction films about Polish migrants,’ NECSUS European Journal of Media Studies (Autumn, 2016).
Along with the rise of transnational film studies, the past two decades have seen an increasing academic interest in the expanding body of (self-)representations of migrant and diasporic subjects and communities in contemporary European cinema (see Berghahn & Sternberg 2010 for a general overview). One of the understudied aspects of this growing body of migration-themed European films is the widespread cinematic use of ethnically coded music (on the extra- and intradiegetic level alike). Drawing on a corpus of approximately 20 migration-centered films produced and released in a wide variety of European countries (including Sweden, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Austria and the United Kingdom), the thrust of this article is to offer a textual and contextual analysis of ethnicised musical performances in European feature film of the past three decades. While doing so, particular attention will be paid to the affective dimensions of this widespread filmic device, most notably by examining its close connection with various aspects of cinematic nostalgia: are these performances primarily used to voice and embody the immigrant’s affective state (trying to “feel” at home in a foreign and alien environment) or do these musical intermezzos rather – or also – serve to induce a feeling of nostalgia in local audiences (by evoking an atmosphere of domesticity and familial togetherness which the host society seems to have lost)?
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Articles by Iwona Gusc
Gusc, I. ‘Over slachtoffers en daders: Jan T. Gross en het Poolse debat over de Holocaust’, Ex Te... more Gusc, I. ‘Over slachtoffers en daders: Jan T. Gross en het Poolse debat over de Holocaust’, Ex Tempore, Vol. 34, 2 (2015) 130-145.
ENG: The Jedwabne-debat in Poland was one of the most important historical debates in East and Central Europe after 1989. This article analyses this debate and traces its impact on the changing paradigm in Polish historiography about the WW2 and the Holocaust.
NL: Het boek van Jan Tomasz Gross getiteld Buren ( Sąsiedzi) confronteerde de Polen met een verzwegen stuk geschiedenis en gaf tevens de aanleiding tot het grootste historische debat in Polen sinds de val van het communisme. In dit artikel zal aan de hand van het Jedwabne-debat worden ingegaan op de ontwikkelingen die de kwestie van Poolse slachtoffers en daders in de historiografie over de Tweede Wereldoorlog in Polen heeft doorgemaakt en de diverse strategieën die historici ontplooid hebben bij het verwerken van de zwarte bladzijden van het Poolse oorlogsverleden.
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Essays by Iwona Gusc
WO2 Onderzoek Uitgelicht, 2021
Inmiddels is het meer dan een jaar geleden dat onze wereld even tot stilstand kwam. Het mondiale ... more Inmiddels is het meer dan een jaar geleden dat onze wereld even tot stilstand kwam. Het mondiale vluchtverkeer ging op slot, de grenzen gingen onverwacht dicht en voor het eerst sinds decennia voelden we ons opgesloten. Dat gold voor burgers in heel Europa. Maar Poolse burgers reageerden toch wezenlijk anders op vrijheidsbeperkende overheidsmaatregelen dan Nederlanders deden. Niet zo vreemd, want gevoelens van vrijheid en de interpretatie daarvan zijn in lokale collectieve herinneringen ingebed en worden door nationale trauma’s gevoed.
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Gusc, Iwona. 2014. "Poolse crimineel redt Joden door kennis van het riool", In: Moedige mensen. H... more Gusc, Iwona. 2014. "Poolse crimineel redt Joden door kennis van het riool", In: Moedige mensen. Helden in oorlogstijd. Eds. J. Cohen, & H. Pirsma. Amsterdam: Boom, 105-108.
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in: Sjacheren met Stereotypen. Essays over “de Jood” als Sjabloon. Ed. Remco Ensel, Menasseh ben ... more in: Sjacheren met Stereotypen. Essays over “de Jood” als Sjabloon. Ed. Remco Ensel, Menasseh ben Israel Instituut Studies XII. Amsterdam 2016.
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Book chapters by Iwona Gusc
Gusc, Iwona. 2007. 'Film Style: The Grotesque in Film. The Romantic Arcadia and Its Grotesque Ene... more Gusc, Iwona. 2007. 'Film Style: The Grotesque in Film. The Romantic Arcadia and Its Grotesque Enemy in Polish Cinema.' In Lo stile cinematografico/Film Style. Eds. E. Biasin, G. Bursi & L. Quaresima, Udine: Forum. 263-277.
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'Zdiagnozowany: "artysta osobny" [...] Szkic o recepcji twórczości Andrzeja Kondratiuka.' In Kino... more 'Zdiagnozowany: "artysta osobny" [...] Szkic o recepcji twórczości Andrzeja Kondratiuka.' In Kino polskie: reinterpretacje. Historia – ideologia – polityka. Eds. K. Klejsa & E. Nurczyńska Fidelska, 413-431. Kraków: Rabid, 2008.
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Iwona Guść in her contribution “Polish Film Culture in Transition: On the ‘Private Films’ of Andr... more Iwona Guść in her contribution “Polish Film Culture in Transition: On the ‘Private Films’ of Andrzej Kondratiuk (1985-1996)” looks at the tensions that can arise between the structures of small national cinemas and “small” forms of filmmaking. Taking her cues from Yuri Tsivian’s seminal reflections on technological innovation and changing reception patterns (which seem relevant not only to early cinema but also to the new forms of spectatorship in the age of YouTube), Guść traces the fascinating career of director Andrzej Kondratiuk who in the second half of the 1980s deliberately turned from being a state filmmaker into an independent filmmaker and developed a radically personal “home movie” aesthetic, using his extended family as actors. Whereas Kondratiuk’s small and personal cinema was initially met with extreme hostility because his aesthetic confused the “ontological status of the characters” and questioned the codified line that separates filmic fact and fiction, the slow acceptance of Kondratiuk into the pantheon of Polish cinema in the 1990s, as Guść explains, points to a fundamental reconfiguration of the private and the public sphere in post-socialist Poland.
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Books by Iwona Gusc
Despite being brutally slated at times, Andrzej Kondratiuk’s films were also often admired and pr... more Despite being brutally slated at times, Andrzej Kondratiuk’s films were also often admired and praised by Polish film critics. Their inability to uniformly categorise and value Kondratiuk’s highly unconventional work has led to him being set aside, and labelled as, a ‘separate’ filmmaker in Polish film history. This study brings the complex dynamic to light that existed between Andrzej Kondratiuk and the Polish post-war film culture in which his work was constantly corrected, smoothed and polished.
The problematic reception that has coloured Kondratiuk’s career is analysed within a framework of the grotesque. Iwona Guść argues that the grotesque devices used by Kondratiuk to undermine established norms were crucial for the developement of the reception process. Her approach, however, does not centre on the formal aspects of Kondratiuk’s films, but rather on the problems of reception they evoked. Guść therefore considers the grotesque as a specific perceptual and cognitive experience elicited by the work itself; an experience in which the violation of expectations and disorientation play a crucial role.
This research explores reception documents from the period 1959 to 2009 and thus covers nearly all of Kondratiuk’s professional career. Guść demonstrates that Kondratiuk stubbornly resisted every interpretive strategy the contemporary viewers had in store for him. While critics and censors were continuously trying to turn him into a polished filmmaker, Kondratiuk kept on refuting their efforts by ridiculing nearly all of their judgments and interpretations. He thus made the canonisation of his own work – during the communist as well as during the post-communist period – virtually impossible.
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Reviews by Iwona Gusc
Conference report
Published in Acta Poloniae Historica, vol. 113, pp. 440-445
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Op-Ed Pieces by Iwona Gusc
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Peer-reviewed articles by Iwona Gusc
This article aims to explain when, how and why this shift took place and what historical and sociological factors were responsible for this change. It also looks at the way Polish veterans used their own war narratives and how their commemoration practices clashed with the dominant Dutch war remembrance culture.
Van Heuckelom, K. & Guść I., ‘Songs of Home (and Away). Ethnically Coded Diegetic and multidirectional nostalgia in fiction films about Polish migrants,’ NECSUS European Journal of Media Studies (Autumn, 2016).
Along with the rise of transnational film studies, the past two decades have seen an increasing academic interest in the expanding body of (self-)representations of migrant and diasporic subjects and communities in contemporary European cinema (see Berghahn & Sternberg 2010 for a general overview). One of the understudied aspects of this growing body of migration-themed European films is the widespread cinematic use of ethnically coded music (on the extra- and intradiegetic level alike). Drawing on a corpus of approximately 20 migration-centered films produced and released in a wide variety of European countries (including Sweden, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Austria and the United Kingdom), the thrust of this article is to offer a textual and contextual analysis of ethnicised musical performances in European feature film of the past three decades. While doing so, particular attention will be paid to the affective dimensions of this widespread filmic device, most notably by examining its close connection with various aspects of cinematic nostalgia: are these performances primarily used to voice and embody the immigrant’s affective state (trying to “feel” at home in a foreign and alien environment) or do these musical intermezzos rather – or also – serve to induce a feeling of nostalgia in local audiences (by evoking an atmosphere of domesticity and familial togetherness which the host society seems to have lost)?
Articles by Iwona Gusc
ENG: The Jedwabne-debat in Poland was one of the most important historical debates in East and Central Europe after 1989. This article analyses this debate and traces its impact on the changing paradigm in Polish historiography about the WW2 and the Holocaust.
NL: Het boek van Jan Tomasz Gross getiteld Buren ( Sąsiedzi) confronteerde de Polen met een verzwegen stuk geschiedenis en gaf tevens de aanleiding tot het grootste historische debat in Polen sinds de val van het communisme. In dit artikel zal aan de hand van het Jedwabne-debat worden ingegaan op de ontwikkelingen die de kwestie van Poolse slachtoffers en daders in de historiografie over de Tweede Wereldoorlog in Polen heeft doorgemaakt en de diverse strategieën die historici ontplooid hebben bij het verwerken van de zwarte bladzijden van het Poolse oorlogsverleden.
Essays by Iwona Gusc
Book chapters by Iwona Gusc
Books by Iwona Gusc
The problematic reception that has coloured Kondratiuk’s career is analysed within a framework of the grotesque. Iwona Guść argues that the grotesque devices used by Kondratiuk to undermine established norms were crucial for the developement of the reception process. Her approach, however, does not centre on the formal aspects of Kondratiuk’s films, but rather on the problems of reception they evoked. Guść therefore considers the grotesque as a specific perceptual and cognitive experience elicited by the work itself; an experience in which the violation of expectations and disorientation play a crucial role.
This research explores reception documents from the period 1959 to 2009 and thus covers nearly all of Kondratiuk’s professional career. Guść demonstrates that Kondratiuk stubbornly resisted every interpretive strategy the contemporary viewers had in store for him. While critics and censors were continuously trying to turn him into a polished filmmaker, Kondratiuk kept on refuting their efforts by ridiculing nearly all of their judgments and interpretations. He thus made the canonisation of his own work – during the communist as well as during the post-communist period – virtually impossible.
Reviews by Iwona Gusc
Op-Ed Pieces by Iwona Gusc
This article aims to explain when, how and why this shift took place and what historical and sociological factors were responsible for this change. It also looks at the way Polish veterans used their own war narratives and how their commemoration practices clashed with the dominant Dutch war remembrance culture.
Van Heuckelom, K. & Guść I., ‘Songs of Home (and Away). Ethnically Coded Diegetic and multidirectional nostalgia in fiction films about Polish migrants,’ NECSUS European Journal of Media Studies (Autumn, 2016).
Along with the rise of transnational film studies, the past two decades have seen an increasing academic interest in the expanding body of (self-)representations of migrant and diasporic subjects and communities in contemporary European cinema (see Berghahn & Sternberg 2010 for a general overview). One of the understudied aspects of this growing body of migration-themed European films is the widespread cinematic use of ethnically coded music (on the extra- and intradiegetic level alike). Drawing on a corpus of approximately 20 migration-centered films produced and released in a wide variety of European countries (including Sweden, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Austria and the United Kingdom), the thrust of this article is to offer a textual and contextual analysis of ethnicised musical performances in European feature film of the past three decades. While doing so, particular attention will be paid to the affective dimensions of this widespread filmic device, most notably by examining its close connection with various aspects of cinematic nostalgia: are these performances primarily used to voice and embody the immigrant’s affective state (trying to “feel” at home in a foreign and alien environment) or do these musical intermezzos rather – or also – serve to induce a feeling of nostalgia in local audiences (by evoking an atmosphere of domesticity and familial togetherness which the host society seems to have lost)?
ENG: The Jedwabne-debat in Poland was one of the most important historical debates in East and Central Europe after 1989. This article analyses this debate and traces its impact on the changing paradigm in Polish historiography about the WW2 and the Holocaust.
NL: Het boek van Jan Tomasz Gross getiteld Buren ( Sąsiedzi) confronteerde de Polen met een verzwegen stuk geschiedenis en gaf tevens de aanleiding tot het grootste historische debat in Polen sinds de val van het communisme. In dit artikel zal aan de hand van het Jedwabne-debat worden ingegaan op de ontwikkelingen die de kwestie van Poolse slachtoffers en daders in de historiografie over de Tweede Wereldoorlog in Polen heeft doorgemaakt en de diverse strategieën die historici ontplooid hebben bij het verwerken van de zwarte bladzijden van het Poolse oorlogsverleden.
The problematic reception that has coloured Kondratiuk’s career is analysed within a framework of the grotesque. Iwona Guść argues that the grotesque devices used by Kondratiuk to undermine established norms were crucial for the developement of the reception process. Her approach, however, does not centre on the formal aspects of Kondratiuk’s films, but rather on the problems of reception they evoked. Guść therefore considers the grotesque as a specific perceptual and cognitive experience elicited by the work itself; an experience in which the violation of expectations and disorientation play a crucial role.
This research explores reception documents from the period 1959 to 2009 and thus covers nearly all of Kondratiuk’s professional career. Guść demonstrates that Kondratiuk stubbornly resisted every interpretive strategy the contemporary viewers had in store for him. While critics and censors were continuously trying to turn him into a polished filmmaker, Kondratiuk kept on refuting their efforts by ridiculing nearly all of their judgments and interpretations. He thus made the canonisation of his own work – during the communist as well as during the post-communist period – virtually impossible.