Polskie kino. Obywatel a służba bezpieczeństwa

Feature film as a historical source is frequently underestimated, while despite its artistic ambitions and openly subjective narration it should be recognized and analyzed as a valuable source of knowledge about the past. The article presents wide contexts and detailed insight into the ways how The Security Service of communist Poland and its relations with ordinary people have been represented and interpreted by the Polish cinema. Surprisingly enough we can learn a lot about methods, activities, surveillance, interrogations and tortures of the secret police during almost any period of Polish history from films made both before and after 1989. Polish films concerning the problem of the Security Service theory and practice could be analyzed according to three different orders: an order of representation, an order of dramatization and an order of updating, which refers directly to the problem of lustration and coming to terms with the past.