Queer theory and Polish cinema

There has never been the Polish version of "Gay Cinema" or "New Queer Cinema". However, in the Polish movies one can easily trace numerous nonstandard characters, elements, and themes permeated with queer desire and rendered in queer aesthetics. They were simply ignored by the research community. The notion of queer, which owes its theorization to Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and which is commonly defined as nonnormative expression of the sexual “strangers” beyond binary oppositions, has rapidly gained popularity in film studies. The researchers have begun to focus on neglected and/or censured unstable sexualities, on film characters' construction, on authorial voice as manifested in the film, and on the different forms and styles of reception. They have looked for queer codes of nonnormative sensibility in the movies of which the authors were or were not homosexuals. Interpretation of two camp scenes from the movie Piętro wyżej (1937, dir. Leon Trystan) demonstrates that the tools which have been developed by queer theory appear helpful when applied to the Polish cinematic texts as well.