ReFocus: The Films of Agnieszka Holland

Elżbieta Ostrowska, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Department of Film and Audiovisual Media at the University of Łódź, Poland. Her most recent book is ReFocus: The Films of Agnieszka Holland (2024). Her articles have appeared in Slavic Review, Studies in European Cinema, and Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

• PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: authorship, women’s cinema, and transnational screen culturesChapter One: Early years: pains and joysChapter Two: Art, politics, and gender: Holland’s participation in socialist Poland’s screen culturesChapter Three: European exilic cinemaChapter Four: Transatlantic journey/adventure, or the re-phaseChapter Five: From cinematic metteur en scène to television auteur?Chapter Six: ‘Back home’ or ‘There’s no such place as home’: postcommunist political cinema revisitedChapter Seven: Performing authorship: from celebrity director to celebrity activistConclusionFilmographyBibliography

"With more than 40 feature films to her name – and counting –　film director Agnieszka Holland may be the most prolific female filmmaker in history today. Elżbieta Ostrowska weaves together the multiple strands of this illustrious career in an absorbing narrative that reveals a persistency of vision in the name of an unobstructed creativity. From the studio system of communist Poland to Hollywood's production machine to a variety of European discursive agendas, Holland's creative and public persona emerges all over again -- unscathed, and with renewed vigor and ingenuity against the odds of adverse industrial, critical and nationalist discourses. A fascinating case study of a nomadic pioneer of transnational filmmaking."