Introduction -- Interwar cinema: striving for social promotion -- The 1920s: the cult of the body and the machine -- The 1930s: the beauty and sadness of the room at the top -- The cinema in people's Poland: taking a great leap -- The 1950s: holy work? -- The 1960s: industrial expansion and small stabilisation -- The 1970s: bad work and good life -- The 1980s: between refusal to work and alienation of labour -- Postcommunist cinema: from triumphant neoliberalism to accumulation by -- Dispossession -- The 1990s: heroic neoliberalism or everybody can be a winner -- The 2000s and beyond: accumulation by dispossession.