“A Generation” and “Katyń” by Andrzej Wajda as Two Variants of an Affirmative Vision of History

Andrzej Wajda’s films are interesting and serious historical narratives, which enter in dialog both with academic historiography and with other forms of familiarization with the past. Some of Wajda’s historical films are part of the paradigm of the affirmative vision of history. It is a vision that focuses on creating the positive picture of the bygone world, on showing those elements of the past that a given community recognizes as glorious and heroic, worth imitating, commemorating, and honoring, which can be the object of pride or even worship. The affirma-tive vision of history belittles, leaves in the background or omits all those themes from the past that fall outside positive evaluation for various reasons and could distort a consistent favorable picture of the past of a community. In the present article I would like to examine from the comparative perspective of two films, “A Generation [ Pokolenie]” (1954) and “Katyń” (2007). The comparison between Andrzej Wajda’s two films made in the space of fifty years shows that despite the fact that the two pictures were produced in entirely different historico‑cultural contexts, using different film styles, the two screen stories present the affirmation of diametri-cally disparate versions of history, it is the dramatic strategies for and techniques of affirmation of history that remain the same in either case.