Cinema as a Cultural Practice of Regional Identity Production: the «Silesian Theme» in Polish Cinema of the XX–XXI Centuries

This paper explores cinema as a cultural practice of regional identity production using the example of the “Silesian theme” in Polish cinema of the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries. The analysis of the historical specifics of the formation of Silesia as an autonomous region allows us to conclude that the identity of local residents has features of multiculturalism, heterogeneity and borderline. The aim of the paper was to identify the specifics of the display and construction of Silesian identity in the cinema of Silesia as a complex of cultural practices, to discover different audiovisual traditions observed among directors of individual generations and artistic movements, and to determine the role of authors' self-identification in this process. The study examines the key themes within the framework of Silesian identity – “Silesian resentment”, the consideration of the land as returned to Poland after the war, the image of the “perfect Silesian”, Silesia as a mining, “black” land, the industriality of the landscape, the archaic local folk culture. It was analyzed that in the cinema of the 20th century, the complexity and heterogeneity of the Silesian identity were realized by almost all directors, however, to simplify, they more often used images of the place, resorting either to its industrial symbolism or to the paradigm of national struggle, which is why many important topics and cultural facts remained undisclosed by the end of the millennium. Modern cinema expands the image of Silesia with different visions: directors do not reuse the same plots and stereotypes, but try to overcome them with the help of topographies of heterogeneity. The ingenuity of modern Silesian cinema, however, does not amount to crossing out local knowledge about the identity of the region and does not mean abandoning accumulated traditions. The paper supports the hypothesis that cinema takes an active part in the construction of ideas about Silesia and Silesian identity, but these “myths" are transformed and modified depending on the socio-political discourse and the self-identification of a particular director.