Wystawy

It is a biographic and retrospective exhibition that shows the life and artistic career of a great star of international cinema. We wish to bring you closer to an actress who began her career in the silent film era and successfully continued it when the sound came into cinema, but for a great many people, especially young ones, she remains unknown. The exhibition was arranged taking advantage of memorabilia not only from Polish archives, libraries, museum collections. It is our foreign partners from Germany, France and the USA, including Deutsche Kinemathek, Deutsches Filminstitut Bundesarchiv, La Cinemathéque française and Paramount Pictures that put us in a position to get hold of interesting materials that cinema lovers  will see for the first time. Pola Negri is the only film star of Polish origin who conquered Hollywood. It is there that she made an astonishing career and paved the way for European  stars in the dream factory. This is how A. C. Lyles, Paramount Pictures producer, reminisces Pola in a memoir written specially for the exhibition catalogue:

“Pola Negri was a famous and important Paramount Pictures actress in the silent film period. She and Gloria Swanson had a great number of fans all around the world. It is her who greatly contributed to Paramount popularity in that period. She was a true star and enjoyed great popularity. Paramount remembers her contribution to its business and wishes to express recognition for her significance in its history.”

Pola Negri played in sixty three films, the majority of which were shot in Germany and the USA, and only in eight in Poland. We hope that the Pola Negri. Cinema Legend Exhibition is exceptional.
To this day, no one has managed to gather so many different memorabilia related to her life and work. A unique collection of postcards, photographs, photographs from shooting locations, stills, film programmes and records will be on display. A collection of over 60 posters and announcements of Pola Negri films from around the world that we have managed to get hold of is truly imposing. Pola Negri’s life shown at the exhibition is accompanied by explanatory notes written by Wiesława Czapińska, a renowned expert in Pola Negri’s life and work, and it is supplemented by the actress’s words from The Star’s Diarypublished in Polish in 1976 by the Czytelnik Publishing House.

Relation Exhibitions

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