America's Andrzej Wajda: Polish Film Exhibition in the United States

How did Polish cinema become visible to American audiences, and what meaning did it hold at different moments? Focusing on Andrzej Wajda and the changing circulation of his films in the United States, this talk considers the roles played by Polish and Polish-American cultural organizations, American museums and universities, commercial distributors, festivals, repertory theaters, critics, and archives. 
Wajda’s American exhibition offers a particularly revealing case: at different times, his films could signify the emergence of a remarkable postwar Polish cinema, a window into the country during the Cold War, a form of political dissent, or an established body of European film history. The talk also considers the less visible curatorial decisions that connect cultural policy and institutional initiatives to these films, and asks how those decisions shape what Polish cinema comes to mean in the U.S.

Archer Neilson is the Film Programmer and Selector of Circulating Media at the Yale Film Archive. She also serves as an Associate Programmer for SXSW Film & TV Festival with a focus on documentary, building on her previous work with the Independent Television Service (ITVS) and UC Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive. Her programming frequently involves collaborative projects with archives, museums, and other cultural institutions, and her work has been seen throughout the United States and in the UK, Mexico, India, and the Netherlands. She holds a B.A. in Film Studies from Yale, and an M.A. in Media Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.