Warszawskie teatry świetlne lat dwudziestych

In the 1920s the capital of the newly independent Polish Republic became a true centre of the cinematic life. In Warsaw members of the cinematographic industry organised themselves into formal associations, journals popularising the tenth muse were established, and a high number of feature films were produced. But above all the capital had the highest number of cinemas, including exclusive première screens. In the late 1920s a typical inhabitant of Warsaw went to the cinema 12 times per year. In present day Warsaw none of the old cinemas, or „Light theatres” as they were called, survive. However traces of them remain in newspapers, memoirs and other documents that survived the catastrophe of the Second World War. To this day a number of in-depth publications were published on the development of pre-war cinema and film in Krakow, Poznan, Lodz, Bydgoszcz, and Lviv. Film Warsaw is still waiting for its turn. Presenting film landscape of the 1920s Warsaw, Swidzinski tries to fill this gap in the history of Polish cinema.