Apel / The Roll-Call
Ryszard Czekała
Poland / 1970 / 7' 15''Screenings
Synopsis
It is one of the most stirring animated films in the history of animation. In a simple, but powerful way Czekała presents a horror that happened in concentration camps – prisoners’ dread, humiliation, and lost humanity. The everyday roll-call ends tragically because of prisoners’ 'insubordination' in this black and white film. The Roll-Call crossed borders of what can be presented or not in animation. It is sometimes interpreted as a response to the trend of allegorical and philosophical films that dominated Polish animation in the 1960s.