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from plays—a sensible decision, considering the talent that the company brought from the local theater. It made Dem khazons tokhter (The Cantor’s Daughter, 1913), Der unbekanter (The Stranger, 1913), Di shikhte (The Slaughter, 1913), Gots shtrof (God’s Punishment, 1913), and Di shtifmuter (The Stepmother, 1914), all based on the plays of Jacob Gordin and premiering, presumably to the theatergoing crowd, in a small cinema in Warsaw. With actors from the Polish-language stage theater, in 1913 Kosmofilm produced a popular three-act adaptation of Halka, the Polish national opera written by Stanisław Moniuszko and in 1914 brought out Karpaccy górale (Carpathian Mountaineers), based on Józef Korzeniowski’s play. In the same year, Sebel filmed a documentary, Ziemia święta, Egipt (Palestyna) (The Holy Land: Egypt [Palestine]), for Finkelstein that was shown in 1915. In its two years of existence, the company produced nearly twenty feature films and documentaries, becoming one of Poland’s main producers.

      In addition to Kosmofilm, Sfinks, and Siła, independent producers and groups of friends made films. Fertner joined three other popular actors—Julian Krzewiński, Wincenty Rapacki, and Juliusz Zagrodzki—to form their own production company. With Sebel as their main cameraman, the company specialized in comedy, specifically in films starring Fertner as the cheery, absentminded character that he had created in Antoś in Warsaw for the First Time. One such film, Zaręczyny Antosia w dzień kwiatka (Antoś’s Wedding Engagement on Flower Day, 1911), satirized philanthropy among Warsaw elites: Fertner’s character, not having enough money to buy flowers for the attention-seeking women surrounding him on the streets of Warsaw, gives away his articles of clothing, one by one.

      In L’viv, there sprang up small production companies that specialized in documenting local news events. According to scholar Irena Nowak-Zaorska, a member of the Polish Teachers’ Union organized the first educational films—featuring scenes from nature, historical monuments, inventions, and other documentary-type films—beginning in late 1909. In 1913, a theater devoted to educational films opened to the dismay of many who felt that motion pictures were demoralizing and harmful to children.⁸

      Marek Münz opened a small production center in his photography studio in 1912, and the firm known as Kinofilm opened soon after. Together, these companies made ethnographic documentaries (presumably registered in official legal documents in the Polish language) such as Wzloty hr. Scipio (The Flights of Count Scipio), Uroczystość Bożego Ciała we Lwowie (Corpus Christi Celebrations in L’viv), and Wiec chełmski we Lwowie (A Rally from Chelm in L’viv).⁹ Other films include Uroczystości ślubne ks. Czetwertyńskiej (Princess Czetwertyńska’s Wedding), Pożar odbenzyniarni w Drohobyczu 21 III 1912 roku (A Gasoline Fire in Drohobycz on March 21, 1912), and Galicja w kinematografie (Galicia in Film), all made in 1912. Completed by Pathé Frères at the request of the Galician Tourism Association, Galicia in Film’s Vienna premiere “drew the court and cream of the capital’s society” and was meant to display L’viv’s significance to the empire’s military strategies, according to Banaszkiewicz and Witczak.¹⁰ Other travelogues made for the Galician Tourism Association include the sights of L’viv, a Hucul funeral, a wedding, and the travel of “hoodlums” on the Czeremosz River.¹¹

      The fiction film Powrót taty (Ballada w 15 odsłonach) (Papa’s Return [A Ballad in 15 Acts]) premiered in L’viv in January 1910.¹² Among other fiction films made in L’viv were Zygmunt Wesołowski’s Miłosne przygody panów Z. i J.—Znanych osobistości w L. (The Amorous Adventures of Messrs. Z. and J.—Well-Known Personalities in L’viv, 1912) and Pomszczona krzywda (An Avenged Injustice, 1912). In all likelihood, Wesołowski wrote the screenplay for the latter. However, promotional materials for the film stated (probably incorrectly but true to “the looking glass” in its privileging of western Europe) that its director was “brought all the way from London.”¹³ New companies, including Muza, Leopolia, and Polonia, attempted to make films. Both of Polonia’s productions—a fiction film about a rich man’s love for a poor flower seller and another featuring American actors—remain unfinished because of the outbreak of the war. Leopolia’s Kościuszko pod Racławicami (Kościuszko at Racławice, 1913) fared poorly in spite of promotion by the company’s mouthpiece, Ekran i scena (Screen and Stage). However, the owners, brothers A. and L. Krogulski, would bring the expertise they had gained in the making of it to a smaller town, Krosno, after the war.¹⁴

      Wiktor Biegański, who became one of the most successful actors and directors of the interwar period, made his first film in Kraków and L’viv in 1913. Parts of his Dramat wieży mariackiej (The Story of the Mariacki Church Tower) have survived. Most likely, this film and his Przygody pana Antoniego (The Adventures of Anton) were never exhibited.

      The Vienna exhibition of a 1500-meter-long film made in 1913 by the Berlin-based Projektions A.G. Union company and directed by Carl Wilhelm, Shylock von Krakau (Shylock from Kraków), caused an uproar in newspapers such as Kronika powszechna (Popular Chronicle). It claimed that the film’s display of Jewish life amid the relics of Poland’s former statehood promulgated “the humiliation of Christian and, in turn, the superiority and triumph of Semitic culture.”¹⁵

      In 1907, Kraków w kinematografie (Kraków in Motion Pictures), Pochód robotniczy i zabawa w Parku Jordana (A Workers’ Parade and Party in Jordan Park), and Pogrzeb Stanisława Wyspiańskiego (The Funeral of Stanisław Wyspiański) were made in Kraków. Other Kraków films of the period include Sport Saneczkowy w Krakowie (Sledding in Kraków, 1909), Rewia automobiłów i wyścigi na Górze Mogilańskiej (An Automobile Show and Race on Mogilańska Hill, 1909), Straż pożarna w Krakowie (The Fire Station in Kraków, 1911), and Pogrzeb Kardynała Puzyny (The Funeral of Cardinal Puzyna, 1911). It is not clear whether all of these films were completed and exhibited.

      Two cities dominated film production and exhibition in the Russian partition during the last years of the tsarist empire. Warsaw, the erstwhile capital, and Łódź, where the Krzemiński brothers advertised the medium diligently, stand in startling contrast to other cities, like Vilnius. At least two films were made in Vilnius in the era before independence: Bez ozdoby: Z nędzy do pieniędzy (Without Adornment: From Poverty to Wealth) and Bóg zemsty (God of Vengeance), based on the Yiddish play by Sholem Asch. The first temporary cinema, Iluzja, opened in 1905, a full four years after the first one in Łódź, and the first permanent cinema opened in 1907, at the tail end of the era of early cinema. Five cinemas were in operation in various parts of the city until the outbreak of World War I. During this period in Kaunas, Władysław Starewicz (Ladislas Starevich) began to experiment with stop-motion animation while working as a documentary filmmaker for a museum of natural history. Wishing to record a fight between two beetles, he grew frustrated by the fact that they slept in the daylight. Fatigued with trying to keep them awake, he killed and dismembered them, reassembled them as puppets, dressed them as soldiers, and shot an early stop-motion animation film, Walka żuków (The Battle of the Beetles, 1910).¹⁶

      Audiences cheered when the Italian film Quo vadis?, directed by Enrico Guazzoni, appeared in Kraków cinemas in 1913. Based on the novel of the same name by Nobel Prize–winning Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo vadis? was so popular among Polish-speaking audiences that in Bydgoszcz, the price of a ticket to the film was the highest audiences had ever seen; the Dziennik bydgoski (Bydgoszcz Daily) proclaimed it “full of poetry, passion, dramatic life, and color.”¹⁷ In Racibórz, tickets were priced at 20 and 30 pfennigs higher than usual, ranging from box seats at 2.6 marks to the gallery at 50 pfennigs.¹⁸ Hertz quickly decided to film adaptations of the Polish writer’s other major works, and in fall 1913, Hertz and Niemirski collaborated to create a production company, Sokół, to make these adaptations, which would require elaborate sets and enormous crowds of extras. Because the rights to Sienkiewicz’s other works, Krzyżacy (The Teutonic Knights) and the epic Trylogia (The Trilogy), already had been bought by a young filmmaker, Edward Puchalski, the company hired him to direct. Sokół, however, did not succeed in its attempts to create a film on the scale of Quo vadis? First, Hertz and Niemirski put the adaptations of Sienkiewicz’s novels aside while they made

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