Historia i metoda. O książce Piotra Witka "Andrzej Wajda jako historyk. Metodologiczne studium z historii wizualnej", Lublin 2016, ss. 712

Abstract

HISTORY AND METHOD. ON PIOTR WITEK’S BOOK ANDRZEJ WAJDA AS A HISTORIAN. METHODOLOGICAL STUDY OF VISUAL HISTORY, LUBLIN 2016, 712 PP.

The review aims to shed light on the methodological concepts proposed in Piotr Witek’s book, and consider the possibility of applying them to the film studies. The reviewer highlights the book’s main concept, which is depicting Andrzej Wajda as a historian and treating his artistic works feature films, documentaries and TV Theatre as historical sources. This approach bases on visual history. In the paper the reviewer talks over the broadening of the frames of historiography done by Witek, and justifies this gesture as a well based on methodological roots of poststructuralism. Witek shows a broad interest in Wajda’s ways of understanding history, his philosophical assumptions, and the issue of artistics tools used in Wajda’s works about the past events. Apart from the reliable analysis of Wajda’s films, discussed book endeavor to build a conceptual platform, on which history and film studies might meet. Unfortunately, it turns out that the latter is dominated in Witek’s methodological concept.