Boleslaw Matuszewski: An Unknown Pioneer of Cinema

Boleslaw Matuszewski: An Unknown Pioneer of Cinema

BOLESLAW MATUSZEWSKI. AN UNKNOWN PIONEER OF CINEMA / BOLEStAW MATUSZEWSKI-NIEZNANY PIONIER KINEMATOGRAFII (2012, dir. Jerzy Bezkowski). Filmoteka Narodowa, Warsaw, 1-DVD, 39 mins., colour and black & white; narration in Polish, with English subtitles.

"Sir, Allow me to draw your attention to a project whose description I attach below."

The modest opening to Bolestaw Matuszewski's 1898 pamphlet Une nouvelle source de l'Histoire sets the suitably hesitant tone for this curiously ill-fated figure's dealings with official bodies. A Polish cameraman, Matuszewski's dream was for each country to have its own museum holding a collection of factual films depicting various facets of everyday life. He pointed out the usefulness of this on educational, medical, even crime-prevention grounds, yet the authorities remained universally blind to his vision.

It's difficult in this image-saturated era to think of a time when film could not be seen as a valuable, even essential, part of chronicling our daily life, yet such was the fate for Matuszewski, who experienced neglect at every turn. Jerzy Bezkowski's new documentary begins with the famous Louis Lumière quote, "Cinema is an invention without a future," indicating how a short lifespan was then considered entirely natural for celluloid.

Matuszewski saw beyond the idea of film as entertainment. For him the basic role of the cameraman was to record human history in general: "From trifles of life towards slices of public and national life," as he wrote in Une nouvelle source de l'Histoire. Unlike the later Soviet...