LAUSR

ABSTRACT The article examines post-war Polish documentary films representing women textile workers from Łódź in order to determine how these films conceptualize their actual socio-economic and political agency in communist Poland. In a brief historical section female workers’ situation is outlined to provide a broader historical, political and social contexts for film analyses. The main aim of close reading of selected documentaries featuring female textile workers from Łódź is to discuss how these films negotiate official gender equity doctrine in communist Poland. The author claims that regardless of their pro- or anti-communist stance, documentary films about female workers do not articulate their subjective agency and, predominantly, serve to support and solidify patriarchal structures of power.