When our team was reading through the list of topics we found “Between Art and Propaganda: The Rise of Polish Animation 1946–1956”, from there we were looking at what question we could choose to focus our presentation on, and the preferred question was “How was Polish animation used as a tool of socialist propaganda to influence children?”, this seemed like a very interesting question that would have a couple of different layers that we could explore. We knew that we wanted to do something different and not try to go for Disney animation or any animation organisation for that matter, we knew that we wanted a historical movement in animation.

Whilst researching this topic, I found it to be very interesting, how the government could twist art in to political propaganda especially to target and brainwash children is mind-blowing, it gives a dark attraction that makes you want to know more about the subject.

First and foremost I started to dive straight in to polish politics instead of jumping in to animation, I wanted to see how the politics formed,  where they brought animation in to it and where it ended. We can see the introduction of different norms for Poland right around 1944-1945 around the time when the red army entered Poland but we hadn’t seen a change in animation until 1946, but mainly after 1949 when ‘guideline were introduced to animators, It seemed to be mainly brought to an end with the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 although this wasn’t instantaneous, the political hold on animation did eventually fall off and become normal again. We can see this through certain critics at the time, in 1954 there was an anonymous critic that wrote about Ivan Ivanov-Vano’s film Śnieżka (The snow maiden, 1952), they said “It seems that a cartoon film should not take on matters that can be shown in a live action film . . . A cartoon film should . . . reproduce themes that are impossible to convey through the means of a live action film, not imitate the latter. (Widz, 1954: 7)”, this shows a strong interest from the people of Poland to disband this political influence over children, they started to realise the affect in which these animations were having on the young people that were growing up through these times.

Research wise, I gathered a lot of different political matters from the encyclopaedia Britannica under the Poznań Riots: (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica (2018). Poznań Riots | Polish history. In: Encyclopædia Britannica. [online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/event/Poznan-Riots), Especially on the building back up of Polish tradition and livelihood, its an article that goes on to talk about how the death of Stalin had affected workers, I believe that this was a solid article to base some of my research on as it showed the influence of a socialist leader over a small part of Poland, but I believe that it was the main affect over the whole of Poland.

I had also looked at (Culture.pl. (n.d.). A Foreigner’s Guide to Polish Animation. [online] Available at: https://culture.pl/en/article/a-foreigners-guide-to-polish-animation). This gave me a fantastic insight to the points that we were properly focusing on, such as the changes in animation from pre world war 2 and onwards and especially in the popularity of animation, as before world war 2, there were very few animators “It’s hard to believe that Polish animation is only 70 years old. Before World War II, animated cinema was practically unknown in Poland and only a handful of people were active in the field”

Ultimately, I really enjoyed this project as it gave me a deeper insight in to the politics and history of Poland, It let me explore my own questions and answer them, The topic was fantastic and my team-mates were great, It gave me a different view of animation on how it could be used almost like a weapon and on how dangerous it can be if used for a skewed political purpose, It shows what can go wrong when trying to portray political means through a medium that is mainly explored by children. I will definitely be looking more in to this on my own time as it is one of the most interesting topics in animation’s history.