Autobiographic Discourse in the Films of Jerzy Skolimowski

Abstract

FROM PARTICIPANT TO OBSERVER: AUTOBIOGRAPHIC DISCOURSE IN THE FILMS OF JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI IN his native Poland Jerzy Skolimowski is regarded as an artist who conveyed his life and persona on screen more effectively than any other Polish filmmaker: the ultimate autobiographer in and for Polish cinema. This paper attempts to establish how Skolimowski managed to convince his viewers that his films are about him, and how his self-portrait evolved over the years. Before I move to discussing Skolimowski's films and his life, it is worth briefly presenting the concept of autobiography I will use here. Following authors such as Roy Pascal, Jerome Hamilton Buckley and Philippe Lejeune, from the times he revised his notion of autobiographical pact, I regard autobiography not so much as a matter of truthful representation of one's persona and life but of the impression effected by the autobiographer on his reader (see Pascal 1960; Buckley...