Sąsiedzi” i filmowa Bydgoszcz

Although researching film history through the history of one film is not a new concept, it is rather rarely used. Piotr Zwierzchowski and Mariusz Guzek’s monograph “'Sąsiedzi'. Film o bydgoskim wrześniu 1939" [“'The Neighbours'. A Film about September 1939 in Bydgoszcz"] (2019) is devoted to the eponymous 1969 film by Aleksander Ścibor-Rylski and, simultaneously, to the city of Bydgoszcz in film. Both narratives are situated in the space of tension between national cinema and the history of cinema in the city which itself was often a place of film locations. The monograph follows the convention of an investigation conducted by the insightful and inquisitive film scholars and historians intrigued by their city’s past, who are equipped with an arsenal of tools and research measures providing an effective cognitive result. Zwierzchowski and Guzek do not intend to revise history, nor do they write the history of cinema anew. The undoubted beauty of the book is its cognitively fruitful and at the same time attractive style, in which the perspective of a witness to history (including the history of cinema) is fortuitously complemented by the perspective of a film consumer of from the past decades. In Piotr Zwierzchowski and Mariusz Guzek’s approach, the perplexities of Ścibor-Rylski’s ‘Bydgoszcz film’ turned out to be a fascinating adventure of cinema in the city which was made a film-city by historical circumstances.