Polish silent cinema (1896-1929) -- The sound period of the 1930s: adaptations, patriotic melodramas, and films in Yiddish -- Cinema, World War II, and the postwar construction of national identity (1939-1948) -- Screen Stalinism: socialist realist films (1949-1954) -- Ashes and diamonds: the Polish School (1955-1963) -- Adaptations, personal style, and popular cinema (1964-1975) -- Camouflage and rough treatment: the "cinema of distrust" (1976-1981) -- The cinema of martial law and afterwards (1982-1988) -- A fistful of dollars: Polish cinema after the wall came down (1989-1998) -- Adapting the national literary canon and reclaiming the past (1999-2004) -- The transforming years (2005- ).