When Martin Scorsese appeared at the Leon Schiller National Higher School of Film, Television and Theatre on Targowa Street in Łódź on December 11th 2011 to receive an honorary doctorate from Robert Gliński, the school’s rector, the joy of the university’s staff and students as well as that of both the national and municipal authorities and the whole world of Polish cinema was great. Nobody then predicted that this was only the beginning of the American director’s romance with Polish Film.

When on November 7th 2013 I found myself in the packed auditorium of Teatr Polski (“The Polish Theatre”) in Warsaw in order to participate in the inauguration ceremony of the Seventh Sputnik over Poland Russian Film Festival, my thoughts went back to the times of my early youth. The times were as they were. Great literature has been created about those times and the political and social climate that dominated the world then. A number of films was made, as was a number of brilliant and important books presenting the currently shrouded-in-legend 1950s, 1960s and 1970s of the previous century.