Film Industry in Poland

On May 26th, Professor Tadeusz Kowalski gave us a speech in regards to the film industry in Poland.

The history of cinema in Poland is almost as long as history of cinematography, and it has universal achievements, even though Polish movies tend to be less commercially available than movies from several other European nations.
After World War II, the communist government built an auteur based national cinema, trained hundreds of new directors and empowered them to make films. Filmmakers like Roman Polanski, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Agnieszka Holland, Andrzej Wajda, Andrzej Żuławski, Andrzej Munk impacted the development of the cinematography. In more recent years, the industry has been producer led with finance being the key to a film being made, and with a large number of independent filmmakers of all genres, Polish productions tend to be more inspired by American film.
Out of the ashes of the war, a current in film arose in the 1950s - the Polish Film School. Its followers set out to create works that would help in coming to terms with the war. Most of its students were from the generation born in the 1920s . The war had interrupted and ruined their young adulthood and they became adamant about showing its consequences on camera. The current was represented by several directors: Andrzej Wajda, Andrzej Munk, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, and Wojciech Jerzy Has.
In 1956, changes in the political climate allowed the Polish Film School to surface. The artists rejected social realism and what it stood for, having another goal in mind - to free art from excessive romanticism and the use of national myths.
Alongside the Polish Film School, a new current appeared in cinema in the mid-60s. It was dubbed "the third Polish cinema". After the first film efforts after the war, which maintained the pre-war style, and following the account-settling of the Polish Film School formed by people who had taken part in World War II, young artists entered the scene. They had been brought up after the war and so had only experienced the post-war reality. It was the end of the Stalinist era and instead of coming to terms with the nation's history and building a socialist motherland, these young filmmakers talked about their everyday lives, moral choices, opportunism and fear of adulthood.
Big changes occurred in Polish cinematography in the 70s. Historical topics were no longer at the forefront. Polish filmmakers began to pursue the psychological aspects of everyday reality in the People's Republic of Poland. They spoke of life in small cities and the countryside, corruption, nepotism and the clash between communist ideals and the problems of a communist state.

Professor Tadeusz Kowalski also recommended us several famous Polish movies.
Andrzej Jakimowski – Imagine (2012) – The film tells two stories. One of love and the other of achieving the impossible. While teaching blind childen to walk in the street without the use of a cane, Ian falls in love. He is a teacher, she is a student and both of them are blind. With this touching story, Andrzej Jakimowski created a beautiful melodrama full of subtlety and tenderness. Starring Alexandra Maria Lara and Edward Hogg.



Paweł Pawlikowski – Ida(2013) - one of the most awarded films of the 2013 festival circuit. The film is a black and white story about the Holocaust, Stalinism, and how history breaks moral backbones. It's also the story of two women - a young nun and her aunt, a Stalin-era judge known as Bloody Wanda. Ida is one of the most talked about films of 2013/2014, and a strong nominee for the 2015 Oscar.

Company Visit to Onet.

In the past few days, we have been amazed at the diverse language, culture and food, and the dynamic energy in Krakow. One of the most impressive experiences is definitely our company visit to Poland’s largest online portal company—Onet.

Starting with a company overview presented by Group Data Officer Marek Kowal, it’s incredible how much the company has achieved and progressed in printing, digital, online and mobile media since it was founded 20 years ago. Now they have 19 million consumers within their group reach. They are rated number 1 in Polish newspaper, business magazines, weekly magazines and t-magazines, and number 1 among online portals. Beyond that, some awesome facts about Onet including: they are the most quoted polish online media with around 50,000 pieces of content being published every month, the most popular online media in Poland with 11 million people visiting the website once a month, and the leading mobile web innovator with more than 2 million users daily.

What impressed me the most is that they are putting a lot of effort and focus on the quality of their contents. They have partnership with top media brands, including CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Newsweek, etc. and 30% percent of the content are their own. As they mentioned, “ the title is the king”, the main tasks of their journalists are not only about giving reliable information quickly, but also about showing different points of views and keeping up with as many sources as possible. 

As most of their revenue is from advertisement, Onet is preparing to work for smaller fees and gain higher traffic, moving to the trend of mobile media consumption and creating own video production. Not only become a traffic generator and sell clicks or views to advertisers, but also trying to understand their consumers and know what they are interested in and sell them. It's very interesting to see how Onet using data to check viewer habits and evaluate their content quality.

Innovation and creativity are embedded in their office and every detailed design. Overall, I enjoyed the company visit a lot. The last but not least, THANK YOU Onet for the lovely gifts to each one of us!

Our Trip to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camps

Saturday was our group’s last day staying in Krakow, and though over the past week we have had quite a few incredible and eye-opening media and tech industry lectures and cultural experiences that have opened our eyes to how much Poland has to offer, there was still one important item on our list to check off: our trip to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps. Though many of us were anxious about seeing the past’s atrocities we knew awaited us, it was time for us to see this enormous part of Poland’s recent history.

The terrifying events of World War II and the Holocaust are still quite a fresh memory in the shared cultural history for Poland, which has become increasingly more evident the over the week as we learned about the culture of the Polish people. Even today, the “coconut culture” of the Polish (meaning a culture slow to trust, but incredibly kind to those proven trustworthy – like a coconut, hard to break but filled with sweet milk) is deeply rooted in the frequently brutal mistreatment and betrayal received by neighboring countries over the past millennium, especially within the last two centuries. These wounds are still fresh in the minds of many people today, and there is no place where the reasons why are more evident than the concentration and death camps still meticulously preserved today just outside the city of Oświęcim.

As we began our tour of Auschwitz I, the smallest and most well preserved camp of the three in the area, you could tell that many of us felt the weight of the past horrors performed on the grounds right away. The tour starts with an intense dose of reality, with pictures of naked and frail bodies, ledgers filled with human trafficking records, and giant piles of artifacts from the events that transpired there a mere 60 years ago. One of the most notable of items: a picture of young children on their way to their death in the gas chambers, looking perfectly calm because they were oblivious of their imminent death, having been told they were on their way to their first meal and shower in days. This type of deception was a typical tactic of the Nazis, whose euphemisms and bold-faced lies often concealed horrific truths lying in plain sight. Other examples of this are the ironic mantra on the front gate (Arbiet Macht Frei, which means “Work will make you free”) and also the outdoor flowerbeds and false shower heads decorating the gas chambers, giving a false sense of safety to prisoners and visitors alike.

Entry gate to Auschwitz I, reading "Arbiet Macht Frei" - Work will make you free

Perhaps the most impactful moment in the beginning, according to several members of our group, was the two tons of human hair removed from the bodies of victims (and even this was a small percentage of the amount found after the war) that was planned for conversion into textiles to furnish the homes of German consumers. Seeing the remains of these poor victims lying together, representing only a small percentage of total victims at the camp and even smaller percentage of victims worldwide, made us realize just how many people were regarded only as disposable objects and taken complete advantage of. We now knew the extent of the mentality that the Nazis only saw these body parts as materials for the taking, not parts of living people.

It is difficult to choose one moment as the most sobering dose of reality, as our trip here was full of them, but if I had to choose one, it would be the moment we stepped into Crematorium I. This perfectly intact gas chamber and crematorium was used to murder thousands of victims during the later years of the war, several hundred at a time, thousands a day. Being inside, you can almost imagine how terrifying it would be to be stuffed into the tiny room with 400 other hungry, weak and naked people, then locked in and left to suffer. Rightfully so, many of these memorials of the horrible crimes committed at Auschwitz are not open for photography due to respect for the victims, so these are sights you must see to believe. It is almost impossible to describe the ominous feeling that overwhelms you once you step foot inside.

Barracks at Birkenau - Auschwitz II. These barracks were home to thousands of women and children.

About one kilometer away, the much larger camp of Birkenau is the solemn scene of many of the Holocaust movies and documentaries that many of us may recall watching in our historical educations. You arrive to the gate greeted by the railroad, which was extended into the camp expressly for the purpose of mass importation of Jewish, Polish, Romanian and gypsy prisoners (among others, such as petty criminals and POWs, to name a few). The long railroad entry with parallel paths on either end stand quite empty now, filled mostly with memories of the hundreds of thousands of people brought here to walk along the roads either sentenced and sent in every direction to either their slave imprisonment or immediate extermination. Surrounding this long path are dozens of large barracks – though, when stuffed with over 700 people at a time, these buildings quickly become completely inadequate. A step inside these buildings reveals the barest of necessities for life - wooden slats; furnaces only built for show; and bathroom troughs (which were only allowed to be used twice a day, before work and after).

Each slot this size typically held 5 people at a time.

But even in such a terrifying place, signs of the resilience of humanity exist. The children’s barracks is lined with simple paintings of happy schoolchildren marching and dancing to school, painted by adult prisoners to give hope to the children whose lives constantly were at risk. And quite a bit of eyewitness evidence now preserved in the museum was secretly penned on smuggled paper by Sonderkommandos (a group of prisoners whose forced, fatal assignment was to burn bodies) and buried underground in the crematoriums. These Sonderkommandos were also entrusted to burn evidence as Soviets approached at the end of the war, but refused to do so, preserving incriminating evidence that led to about 10% of SS participants’ convictions.

Still, much more evidence at this site, including the largest crematoriums (II and III) and much paperwork evidence, was destroyed when Hitler and the other high level commanders began attempting to cover their crimes, in case of capture and trial.  But we can still see and feel so much of the dark past that was the daily life of millions of innocent people in Eastern Europe that the missing evidence is almost not needed to imagine the full scope of what happened there over 60 years ago.

After visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau, one has to wonder how any person with any human decency could ever deny that the events of the Holocaust occurred, especially when so much undeniable evidence rests in this memorial for all to see. One also must question how humanity (outside of a then very anti-Semitic Germany) could have systematically failed the millions of people persecuted in the  death camps located in Poland.

To this day, officials from all over the world, including leaders from Poland, offer formal apologies for the crimes committed at Auschwitz, and hold steadfast their commitment to prevent these events from happening in the future, with many countries forming laws to protect the memory of those who died and heavily punish Holocaust deniers. As many of us know, in the United States there is still a relatively strong Neo-Nazi following lurking in the shadows, so there is still much to be done, but keeping the memory and undeniable proof alive is the first of many steps in ridding the world of such intense xenophobic hatred for good.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember, in hopes to honor the memory of every innocent life lost across Europe’s death camps, is this:

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.

-George Santayana

Exploring 'New Silicon Valley' and the emerging economy of Poland

Bright colors. Open spaces. Eclectic coffee mugs. A collaborative environment. Welcome to the up and coming 'New Silicon Valley".

On day four of our adventures in Poland, we learned about a cutting-edge aspect of Krakow's story through a series of lectures at Ambasada Krakówian. As with much of this trip thus far, the setting and environment we were in had as interesting of a story as the lectures themselves.

The second you walk in the door, you can feel a creative, communal energy, which is the exact mission of this unique space. Ambasada Krakowian is a social innovation networking hub that supports up and coming NGOs in their quests to start their businesses. Its goal is to support these businesses in their missions by providing a supportive community, informal structures for meetings and workshops as well as an atmosphere that fosters innovation, community and new ideas.

It has been so interesting learning about the developing economy of Poland, and this space is indicative of the emerging, innovative efforts contributing to this growth. We experienced a taste of the various start-ups that have benefited from this collaborative space, from community gardens to transportation planning and even educational workshops for children.

One thing that struck me while learning about these various start-ups and the space that supports them is that the work goes beyond a bottomline but also fosters a strong sense of community. He spoke about how Ambasada Krakowian hosts relationship meetings in addition to business-related meetings. This is indicative of an interesting aspect of Polish culture - that of relationships and people. Throughout the week, it has been obvious that many of the inspiring men and women we met with look beyond the bottom line when conducting business but really focus on their customers, products and relationships.

It was also interesting to see how this innovative, incubator environment juxtaposed with that of the economic growth propelled by multinational corporations establishing presence in Poland. We had an engaging conversation (with a slight motivational twist) with Lukasz Cioch from Aspire Network about the technology and business services hub as well as future career paths - both for Polish students and ourselves.

There were similar themes in both lectures especially with regards to developing strong networks. One thing that struck me during Lukasz's presentation was his use of the word ' multinational' instead of 'international.' While seemingly the same word, for me personally, 'international' has more of a transactional connotation whereas 'multinational' reflects a more collaborative, communal experiences through which multiple parties are brought together. It could have been the energy of Ambasada Krakowian but this choice of worlds reflected a collaborative component within this new economy, even when discussing existing, established corporations.

Lukasz's talk also propelled me to think about why I embarked on this experience in Poland, and how it will help me in the future. He mentioned the importance of knowing where you want to go in your career to ensure you're being effective and strategic in all you do to get there. While I disagree that I need a final answer at this point in my life as to where the rest of my career may take me, he made an interesting point about finding a passion and drive to propel you through work. It inspired me to pause and realize that I'm energized and excited about where I am in my educational and career story.

I mentioned in my first post wanting to expand my perspective and jump out of the tiny place I occupy at Fordham and in New York City. This experience, thus far, has gone above and beyond in doing that, inspiring me to think differently about my MBA experience, my position in consulting and on a broader level, a true appreciation for the opportunities that I've had.

Kraków, you've been amazing and I'm exciting to see what these next two days have in store. Dziękuję Ci

History, Culture and Collective memory

As the sun begins to set on the main square in Cracow, the beauty of the city intoxicated me. I'm stunned by its spectacular scenery as well as the history and culture behind the country, Poland. 

Professor Marta Shaw gave us a brief introduction of the intriguing history of Poland, which covered the important transitions during several periods of history. For example, in Jagiellonian dynasty, the hereditary system was replaced by election system. The power of the king had greatly shrunk compared to the prior time since the local nobles had the most privileges from the success of elections. Furthermore, the professor further explained how Catholic became the national identity of Poland and how the political parallelism was built with religion. Even more interestingly, some anecdotes mentioned in the morning panel showed its historical traces in the visit of the old town later in the afternoon. we heard the trumpet from the top of the church which served as reconnoitre discovering invaders in the legend.

In terms of culture, Poland is a country with typical Coconut culture, which means it's hard to know people and get in the social circle if you don't get introduced by someone from inside. It's totally opposite to the Peach culture of America, which is soft outside and hard inside. Also, because of the history that polish had endured, they prefer starting a small conversation with passive critics. The Polish culture varies greatly to the American culture in different aspects. But both of them show their complexity and distinctive beauty in culture.

Poland has a period of unforgettable collective memory, which is extremely painful during the second world war. In the panel given by professor Marek Kucia, it shows that most Jewish in Poland were killed in that time. Furthermore, It's surprising to know that in the dark social environment, Jewish were damagingly killed by Poles as well, not only by Nazi.  Given a glimpse of the miserable history of this country, It seems much easier to understand how polish culture is made and what decides the country's communist history and economic transitions after the end of the war.

Poland has experienced extreme hardships and difficulties in the past. But its persistence and toughness lead the country stepping forward to a bright future. I'm looking forward to experiencing more in the terrific country during the rest of the week.

Catholic Publication in Poland

Today we visited a well-known Polish publication with a long and rich history. Tygodnik Powszechny was established in 1945 as a weekly lay catholic magazine. Decades later, the publication remains relevant by continuing to transform itself with timely current events content and digital technology. For the first 40 years of the publication’s existence, it served a very important role as a forum for “free” speech while Poland was under communist regime. While the published content wasn't completely free, censorship of religious content was less stringent so people sought it out as a source of freedom. Many of the past editors of Tygodnik Powszechny are held in high regard for their service during the difficult years before 1989. These editors had to carefully manage the relationship between the Soviet regime and the desires of the public to read genuine content that wasn't overly censored. From 1989 until today, the magazine has competed with other popular weeklies in a continuously growing free market economy.  In order to keep a strong readership base that spans many generations, Tygodnik Powszechny has built a digital presence with a website, Facebook page, twitter handle, and Kindle edition. They have also expanded the political section, and shortened the articles to accommodate the interests and habits of younger readers.

This was one of my favorite company visits thus far because the United States doesn't have any publications of this nature. Also, Tygodnik Powszechny has a rich history that in my mind exemplifies Poland’s national character of perseverance. On our tour we also learned about the strong connection the magazine had to John Paul II who authored several articles. The office was humble, and the staff quite small. However, the exclusive team is clearly very experienced and their hard work is tangible. I was surprised to hear that each journalist must write up to three pages of content weekly and serve an editor function as well. The close-knit group was compared to a “special forces unit” because they work so closely to accomplish the lofty goal of producing premier content week after week. I am familiar with all of the hard work and time that goes into producing a magazine publication. I worked on a team of about 200 people that produced a monthly lifestyle magazine. In comparison, the small and passionate staff of Tygodnik Powszechny manages to publish weekly, and keep the nation up to date with relevant news content and current social issues.

"The Never Ending Battle for Freedom of the Media"

In Poland, the media market is pursuing its freedom after the change of its political system. Therefore, Professor Tomasz Goban-Klas used The Never Ending Battle for Freedom of the Media as the title of his lecture about history of media and technology industries  in Poland. I really like this title as it describes the exact situation here vividly and would like to share the insights and my reflections from his lecture with all of you.

During the ruling of communists, the media market in Poland was totally under the control of the government. All the media companies, such as television, radio and newspaper, were state-owned. The government controlled what could be watched and heard by people. Sometimes, the companies had to serve as a tool of propaganda for the party. Media companies couldn't provide the objective content to the audience. Instead, the information was sometimes filtered and twisted on purpose. For example, some capitalism countries were depicted as evil places. The media industry seemed to have no freedom at all, because of the strong censorship. Of course, there always were some open-minded people to fight against the suppression.

When Poland turned into capitalism, the situation became better. Some media companies are still state-owned, but they are public companies now. They have the freedom to provide objective content to the people, even the content may be negative towards the government. So it is a big step forward for the media market in Poland. And the concept of public companies is interesting. The main fund comes from taxation instead of advertisements. So the companies don't have to cater the need of advertisers, which is pretty positive to the companies.

But as the new president and prime minister become in power, the regulation to the media market from the government seems to become tighter. So the battle for freedom of the media will never end.

The professor also mentioned that the political system is changeable. So I think that maybe it is possible to establish a free media market in a communism country. This kind of possibility is highly depend on the heads of the government or the party, I think. If they are open-minded, they may be likely to offer more freedom to the media market, as the communism country, like China, can have a market economy now.

Moreover, the new technologies, especially the development of the Internet, give people more options and make it more difficult for the government to control the media industry. And social media provide people with more channels to express their opinions. Those channels are also difficult for the government to control.

Lastly, I hope the battle for freedom of the media not only in Poland, but also in every other countries can have more positive results. The total victory seems impossible, since the battle will never end.