21st Anna Sienkiewicz-Rogowska Festival of Silent Cinema & Sounds of Silents

Cult of the body

5-8 October 2026, cinema Iluzjon

On November 5-8, 2026, the iconic Silent Cinema Festival will be held at the Iluzjon Cinema — Museum of Film Art in Warsaw for the 21st time.

The most important festival in Poland dedicated to the film art of the silent period presents digitally restored titles, mostly unknown to the Polish public, with live music. The theme of this year's edition is the cult of the body. In addition to feature films, we will present the first registrations of sporting events, circus, dance shows.

This year we invite you to discover the history of cinema combined with the experience of its materiality, technology and power of impact. In addition to the premiere screenings of canonical titles in new, restored versions, we will show films forgotten, rarely presented, only today regaining their place in the history of cinema. Among them are genres and forms that were just taking shape in the era of silent cinema — action cinema, melodramas, experiments, first animations and recordings of sports events.

Patterns of Masculinity

Inspired by social media feeds and the intense message of popular culture, this year's Silent Film Festival will showcase the first audiovisual patterns of masculinity — the figures of muscular superheroes, famous long before Arnold Schwarzenegger and Marvel Body, and the timeless fantasies behind them.

We will go back to early cinema, which developed the 19th century cult of physical strength, fascinated by the body as a proof of character, status, a symbol of national vitality and an instrument of domination. Cinema has learned not only to photograph and analyze movement, but above all to rhythmicize, edit, extract and capture beauty. In the films presented, men: run, jump, do gymnastics and fight; horses and elephants will walk along them; they will dance for the audience, jump into the abyss and slide down the rope. Desirable, naked and clothed.

The cult of the body. World premiere

The main theme of this edition of ŚNK — the cult of the body — around which Aleksandra Kot created the visual identity of the festival, was borrowed from the Polish-Austrian co-production of the same name from 1930 directed by Michał Waszyński. In a modern formally melodrama with interesting editing and sophisticated camera work, the body becomes an object of desire and an instrument of social hierarchy and prestige. The film will have its world premiere of the new restored version, and the music for it will be composed by Adrian Konarski and the Semi-Invented Trio.

Strong man. Polish repremiera

On November 5, 2026, the festival will open the Polish repremiere — often referred to as the best Polish silent film — “The Strong Man” directed by Henryk Szaro from 1929 in a version after the new digital restaurant. The title itself sounds like a declaration, but the plot quickly complicates the meaning of the title. Strength here is by no means a physical property of the hero. The original music for the live film will be performed by composer Stefan Wesołowski. The main role was played by an actor of Ukrainian origin — Hryhorii Khmara (known in Poland as Grzegorz Chmara). His creation gave us an excuse to recall the earlier incarnation of the actor in Robert Wieni's film adaptation “Raskolnikov” (1923). In both films, thanks to his mesmerizing and very contemporary acting, Chmara has created characters that are characteristic and extremely intense.

Raskolnikov, Golem and the Man with Steel Nerves

On the festival Friday, November 6, there will be films from the “dark” category. In addition to the Polish repremiere of “Raskolnikov” with music by composer and cellist Michał Pepol for the first part of the film and the Royber Trio: Trzaska/Moretti/Walicki for the second, we will show “Golema” (1920) directed by Paul Wegener — one of the oldest and most fascinating embodiments of male power. The power that was supposed to help the oppressed Jewish population would soon become destructive.

As part of the world premieres of two new restaurants, we will show films by the father of action cinema, Harry Piel — a star of German cinema of the 1920s, today unjustly forgotten. “On the banks of the Ganges” (1923) with music by Jerzy Mączyński and “Man of Steel Nerves” (1924) with music performed by the Torpedo Group will open up a cinematic world of fast-paced action, dress-up, dynamic movement and risky stunt shows.

The Black Pirate in Technicolor and Mareya Chronophotograph

The festival will close the show “Black Pirate” (1926) by Albert Parker with jazz-funk music by the Tri-City septet Klawo. The light, resilient and athletic body of Douglas Fairbanks will dominate the screen. Note: this will be the first color film at ŚNK, shot in the early Technicolor two-tone technique, painstakingly restored by MoMA.

The programme included short films, which were the essence of the early phase of cinema: chronophotographs by Étienne-Jules Marey (1830—1904), a French physician and physiologist, pioneer of movement research. In the Physiological Station, founded in 1882 on the edge of the Boulogne Forest, Marey studied the locomotion of people and animals, using photographic equipment he had constructed. Chronophotography allowed him to decompose the smooth, imperceptible to the eye movement into successive phases and subject it to measurement.

Gymnastics shows

In a witty way, the theme of gymnastics and hygiene will appear in Alexander Djalishvili's “Ten Minutes in the Morning” (1930), a Soviet-Georgian educational film promoting the state's health and hygiene policy. This is one of the late examples of silent cinema, showing the propaganda approach to the body in communist society.

Noteworthy are two excerpts from the recording of shows by Siegmund “Zishe” Breitbart, born in Stryków near Łódź in 1893, one of the most famous strongmen in the world, and the sports films of Jan Kříženecki showing performances. The screenings will be complemented by a lecture by Dr Monika Supruniuk on the cinematography of the Lumières — a new acquisition of FINA's technical collection.

The 21st edition of ŚNK will be enriched with lectures by excellent foreign guests: restaurateurs and researchers, tireless enthusiasts of searching and discovering lost, forgotten histories and film technologies.

Material and technological history of the film

The material and technological history of the film remains of constant importance to us. We will be showing the films this year from digital media, which does not change the fact that at the center of our interests is always the attention to respect the historical proportions of the image, the coloring or the speed of the projection. So we're going to look behind the screen: look at old technologies, the processes of restoration and reconstruction of the image, and how the ways of saving and reproducing moving images have changed. This year we will pay special attention to the cinematographer of the Lumière brothers, the Mareya photographic rifle and the early color technique: the two-tone Technicolor.

Royal meeting around the cinema

For us, the Silent Cinema Festival is primarily a meeting, to which we invite film and music enthusiasts, researchers, archivists, restaurateurs from the most important European and world film institutions.

A special place in this year's program is occupied by Belgian films. The Royal Belgian Film Archive (Cinémathèque royale de Belgique), with which FINA collaborated on the restoration of three Polish silent films found in Belgium, is the programme partner of this edition. The premieres of these three titles will take place during this year's festival. The Honorary Patron of the 21st ŚNK is the Embassy of the Kingdom of Belgium.

Additional events

The program will not lack screenings for the little ones. This time we will meet Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. We have also planned events dedicated to the history of film technology and the archaeology of cinema in the form of: the Film Atlas project, the presentation of the works of Harry Piel and Étienne-Jules Marey and an exhibition in the foyer of the Iluzjon cinema entitled “Afterimages of Movement”. In turn, the Archeo Sisters prepared Saturday's episode of Sounds of Silents. This evening we will also invite you to get up from the cinema seats and play together to the rhythm of the picture and music. By engaging (our own) bodies, we will explore the mechanisms of movement with many senses. Existent movie bodybuilding.

On November 5-8, for the 21st time, paintings from a hundred years ago will meet contemporary live music. Although technologies, ways of seeing and generations of viewers are changing, cinema is still an art of movement and an experience that is best lived together.