“A history of Polish avant-garde film exists in fragments” (ix), is how Kamila Kuc begins her book Visions of Avant-Garde Film: Polish Cinematic Experiments from Expressionism to Constructivism. Filling these lacunae is especially difficult in the case of avant-garde film before 1945, the period Kuc is interested in: the very notion of avant-garde film has often been misused by artists, critics, and later, film historians. More importantly, out of very few completed films only three survived to date. Some of the lost or unrealized projects have been recently reconstructed on the basis of documents, scripts, interviews, and stills. Such filmic reconstructions offer an important tool for the history of Polish avant-garde cinema.

The approach proposed by Kuc, based on recent works by Ian Christie, Guliana Bruno, Pavle Levi, seems somehow similar. The author examines existing films from different perspectives, carefully explores notes and scripts to reconstruct both the lost works and the projects that had never been realized. She also adopts Levi's concept of cinema by other means and interrogates cine-poems, cine-novels, visual art, and/or critical and theoretical writings. After a brief introduction into the key elements of definitions of avant-garde and the most important aspects of Polish history and culture at the turn of the nineteenth century, Kuc divides the book chronologically into two parts: the “protocinematic phase” (1896–1918), and the relationships between Polish art movements and avant-garde film (1918–45). The author refers to actualities of early cinema and the first Polish critical texts on film, treating cinematography as a record of reality and a source of history (Zygmunt Korosteński and Bolesław Matuszewski). Next, the author describes the first attempts to grasp the specificity of the film medium in different literary and critical works (including Karol Irzykowski's early play), as well as the first experiments in the field of avant-garde animation by Feliks Kuczkowski, inspired by expressionism and formism. Kuczkowski is also the author of the concept of synthetic-visionary film that should not use any naturalistic, photographic records of reality.

The second part of the book comes back to Irzykowski's ouevre, this time to analyze the concepts of cinema in Tenth Muse. Irzykowski praised animation as a realization of “the film of pure movement” (58), and was particularly interested in films that could explore filmic qualities and concentrate on movement as such. Later, the author unpacks the influences of futurism in several film projects (including Themersons’ Calling Mr. Smith that in Kuc's opinion “can be characterized by the same futurist and Dada-like rebellious attitude toward Western civilization” [73]), and filmic tropes in futurist literary practice, namely cine-poems and cine-novels that prove futurist interest in cinema. The next chapter is devoted to discourses connected to the concepts of photogénie, montage, and the interrelations between film and music, which clearly link Polish artists and critics with the wider European scene. Kuc looks at these discourses in order to analyze films and unmade projects. The final chapter brings to light influences of constructivism, defined by the relationships to social problems. Here, the author describes, among others things, the art of political intervention, photomontage, and the usage of montage in films, ending this chapter with a discussion of abstract film.

Undoubtedly, Kuc has managed, through the analysis of a wide array of materials, to show the complex character of cinematic experiments in Poland, casting light on many previously underrated phenomena. Her account is situated in the broad context of the Polish and international avant-garde scene (the book's rich bibliography is worthy of note), so the reader could understand how the experiments were rooted in different traditions and complicated historical and cultural circumstances. It is sometimes difficult to clearly distinguish, however, whether Kuc points to direct influences and inspirations or presents general similarities or loose associations. It would be instrumental to reconstruct a little more precisely the knowledge of the avant-garde film and activity of institutions dedicated to it in Poland, namely what films were screened in Poland and what films were reviewed in the press. The book only partially addresses such questions.

Kuc's ambitious project provides a comprehensive view of Polish avant-garde film before 1945, making a solid contribution to the experimental cinema field of studies and showing how illuminating an account based on sources other than realized films can be for early avant-garde cinema.