Academy of Cinema – enrolment
The New Horizons Association invites you to take part in the Academy of World Cinema and the Academy of Polish Cinema.
The Academy of World Cinema welcomes both students of Wrocław universities and independent participants – regardless of age or educational background. The main aim of the lectures is to familiarise audiences with the most important issues in the history of cinema in its cultural, social, political, and artistic contexts – in the spirit of the so-called New Film History. In this way, cinema becomes a lens through which viewers can observe how the world has changed over the past century.
The second semester of the Academy of World Cinema focuses on key aesthetic and genre formations that have shaped modern thinking about film. It opens with the “golden age”, juxtaposed with an analysis of American crime and gangster films of the 1930s. This makes it possible to grasp both the logic of the classical studio system and the mechanisms of its internal tensions. A block devoted to film noir and neo-noir, together with sessions on eroticism in pre-Code cinema, demonstrates how the rules of representation and censorship co-create cinematic poetics, while later genre revisions give rise to their modern, self-reflexive forms. Discussions are framed by both classic titles (Citizen Kane, Baby Face) and contemporary films (Blade Runner 2049), which structure the historical and thematic order of the meetings.
The second part of the semester centres on movements of cinematic renewal and debates on modernity: from the “new neorealism”, through the French, Czechoslovak, Japanese and Australian New Waves, to modernism and postmodernism. The Latin American concept of Third Cinema will also be discussed, highlighting the relationship between aesthetics and the politics of representation, alongside contemporary transformations in genre cinema and different modes of documentary. The selection of films accompanying the lectures – including Two Days, One Night, The Cremator, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Blow-Up, Black God, White Devil – provides material for analysing changes in narrative, style, and production from a transnational perspective.
Programme of the Academy of World Cinema
The Academy of Polish Cinema is an original project run by the National Centre for Film Culture in cooperation with the New Horizons Association. It takes the form of a year-long (two-semester) course on the history of Polish film. Each semester consists of twelve sessions, each comprising a lecture on a selected period of Polish cinema history followed by a film screening.
The aim of the Academy of Polish Cinema is to provide education in the field of Polish cinema. Over the course of two semesters, films from across the history of Polish cinema will be shown, accompanied by lectures drawing attention to the films’ themes, their creators, historical contexts, and visual means of expression. The syllabus has been arranged in a non-chronological order, emphasising the dialogic character of Polish cinema and its recurring engagement with certain themes and phenomena. Each session begins with a lecture, followed by a film screening.
The academic value lies in juxtaposing different periods and movements, which enables a deep analysis of the evolution of Polish cinema, reflection on filmmakers and their work, as well as on the history of Polish film and the social issues it addresses. This allows participants to gain a fuller understanding of the significance of cinema as an artistic and cultural medium. Examples of both older and more recent films reveal shifts in aesthetics, narrative, and subject matter, as well as differences in approaches to form and content.
Programme of the Academy of Polish Cinema
Date of publication: 16.09.2025
Added by: M.J.
