Papusza: how a people made its way into history.
Papusza (2013) is a biopic, directed masterfully by Joanna Kos-Krauze and Krzysztof Krauze, about the Romany poetess Bronisława Wajs (1908-1987), born and raised in Poland. The film doesn’t follow a coherent chronological line, continuous flashbacks take the story from the beginning of the 20th century, when Papusza (which means “doll”, that’s the Romany name of the poetess) was born, to the first years of the postwar period, in a wounded and wrecked Poland, trying to put the pieces back together; and then to WW2 when Gipsies had to hide in the woods to escape from the horrors of the Nazis. Lastly, to the 1970s, when Papusza and her community were forced by communist authorities to become nonmigratory, settling down in houses and attending school, that will entail the cultural “death” of the Romanies (I shall come back to this).
