I still remember watching "Kung-fu" in 1979 at the Student Film Club, where we also met some people involved in the creation of this movie. The film director Janusz Kijowski was one of the young and ambitious artists of the late 1970s that took a stand against communism. His 1977 film "Index" was banned by the censors and was shown to the public only in 1981, after the creation of the "Solidarity" movement. The plot is about a group of close friends, which was formed during their studies: Witek (Piotr Fronczewski), Irena (Teresa Sawicka), Zygmunt (Daniel Olbrychski), and Marek (Andrzej Seweryn). The events of March 1968 separated them. Years later, they meet again to help Witek, who is unjustly fired from his work. I enjoyed watching "Kung-fu" because it was one of those films that showed the abnormalities and corruption of communist Poland. It was also relatively fast-paced for the films of that period, with good dialogues and a realistic picture of the background. Some people from the audience didn't like the proposed remedy to the evils around us: the provincial clique being fought by the clique from Warsaw. But it wasn't true, because the reference to March 1968 meant that Witek, Irena, Zygmunt, and Marek were decent young people who took a stand against the persecution of Jews in their country. They reunited together in 1979 to fight again-this was an obvious motto of the "Solidarity" movement. The film was much acclaimed and awarded at domestic and international film festivals. So "Kung-fu" has its place in the history of Polish cinema, together with films of such directors like Krzysztof Kieslowski, Agnieszka Holland, Feliks Falk, and such famous works like "Man of Marble" and "Man of Iron" by Andrzej Wajda. But is "Kung-fu" universal, or is it the product of its time? We have to strip it of its noble ideology and look at it again as an individual story. Some people might still like it. I think that "Kung-fu" is definitely worth seeing today because of the participation in it of the whole galaxy of distinguished actors who became icons and because it is a valuable document of its time.
