Images of the Western and Northern Territories in the Polish Film Chronicle in 1944-1948

The aim of this article is to present the images created for political communication by the editorial team of the Polish Film Chronicle (PKF), an important means of transmission of political content. The hypothesis adopted in the research was that in post-war Poland, the PKF became an important component of propaganda activities carried out by the state. Alongside the press and the radio, it was an important tool of political influence in relations between the state authorities and the public. The study uses the techniques of exegesis and media analysis, together with the systemic analysis method. It shows that the PKF’s political communication contained a whole set of meanings, values and principles that played an important role in the media and political message concerning Poland’s Western and Northern Territories and influenced the creation of their image. The pictures of the Western and Northern Territories presented by the PKF’s editors were a component of the political communication process, whose final effect was to legitimise the actions of the post-war state authorities. The incorporation of new territories into the “Motherland” symbolised the cohesion of the nation and the state. The glory of historical events related to the Western and Northern Territories, referred to in the messages communicated by the PKF, and the construction of a new symbolic and cultural order were characterised by political intentionality and trivial indoctrination. The consistent reference to the myth of Piast Poland with regard to the Western and Northern Territories had a compensatory function after the loss of the Eastern Borderlands of the Republic of Poland. The themes of the films shown in the PKF shaped the image of the Western and Northern Territories and contained elements of the anti-war, anti-German, patriotic, national and popular propaganda so desired by the state authorities. The content of the PKF fostered the Polonisation of the memory concerning the end of the war and its consequences, and strove to magnify the achievements of the glorious tradition of the Polish nation in viewers’ eyes.