The Workshop of the Film Form (WFF) is widely considered to have been “the most radical phenomenon among the New Wave tendencies in Polish cinema at the turn of the 1970s.” This chapter offers a comparative study of its oldest and youngest core members—Jozef Robakowski and Paweł Kwiek, respectively—whose similarities and differences illuminate the social conditions, artistic sensibilities, and ideological stances that informed the activities of the WFF.

The WFF emerged from the Film School in Łodź and functioned initially as an informal network of its students and employees. Its core included, beyond Robakowski and Kwiek, Wojciech Bruszewski, Ryszard Waśko, Antoni Mikołajczyk, and Andrzej Rożycki, among others (Figure 3.1). Robakowski is widely recognized as one of the most prolific figures in Polish contemporary art who pursued an innovative and influential practice as both an artist and a theorist from the 1960s to the present day. He notably pioneered practices throughout the 1970s that critically examined film as a medium using techniques broadly associated with structural cinema. Kwiek developed similar interests during this decade, but his later work followed a different path after the WFF period and has been less widely recognized.

This chapter considers the two artists’ parallel trajectories, as well as key differences, through four loosely chronological sections. The first section traces the beginnings of the WFF and the ways in which Robakowski and Kwiek pursued a critique of narrativity in film and contested the cinematic conventions of state-controlled mainstream Polish film culture.