Refocus: The Films of Agnieszka Holland - (Refocus: The International Directors) by Elzbieta Ostrowska (Hardcover)

About the Book

Examines Polish director Agnieszka Holland's films and television works from the perspective of transnational screen cultures

Book Synopsis

The Films of Agnieszka Holland is the first monograph devoted to the internationally most famous Polish filmmaker, a three times Oscar nominee and the recipient of numerous film festival prizes. It examines her rich, original oeuvre, which ranges from Holocaust dramas such as Europa, Europa (1990) to episodes of the HBO series The Wire. In examining the multifaceted nature of Holland's authorship, the study situates her work in the context of art, popular, national, European, Hollywood, transnational, women's, and queer cinema, as well as global television projects. Her colourful public persona oscillates among auteur, celebrity director, and political activist in an extraordinary professional trajectory, which started in the Eastern Bloc, continued in Western Europe and North America, then backtracked to a unified Europe. That zigzagged route conveys the unique nature of Holland's career while epitomising the transformations of post-Cold War cultural production.

Review Quotes

"Combining meticulous research, critical acumen, and theoretical sophistication, Ostrowska judiciously tracks the ways in which the concerns of ethics, politics, identity, gender and spirituality have criss-crossed Holland's provocative oeuvre. Particularly impressive is her tenacious grasp of its Protean shifts between auteurism, national and transnational cinema, Hollywood, and 'women's cinema'"

--Paul Coates, Emeritus Professor of Film Studies, Western University, Canada

"With more than 40 feature films to her name - and counting - film director Agnieszka Holland may be the most prolific female filmmaker in history today. Elżbieta Ostrowska weaves together the multiple strands of this illustrious career in an absorbing narrative that reveals a persistency of vision in the name of an unobstructed creativity. From the studio system of communist Poland to Hollywood's production machine to a variety of European discursive agendas, Holland's creative and public persona emerges all over again -- unscathed, and with renewed vigor and ingenuity against the odds of adverse industrial, critical and nationalist discourses. A fascinating case study of a nomadic pioneer of transnational filmmaking."

--Dina Iordanova, Emeritus Professor in Global Cinema, University of St Andrews, Scotland

About the Author

Elżbieta Ostrowska is an Associate Professor in the Department of Film and Audiovisual Media at the University of Lódź, Poland. Her publications include Women in Polish Cinema, co-authored with Ewa Mazierska (2006), the co-edited volumes The Cinematic Bodies of Eastern Europe and Russia. Between Pain and Pleasure (with Ewa Mazierska and Matilda Mroz) and The Cinema of Roman Polanski. Dark Spaces of the World. Her articles about film in have appeared in publications such as Slavic Review, Studies in European Cinema and Feminist Encounters.