Łapkiewicz Family Archive

The author of the film is Jerzy Łapkiewicz, who filmed the events of his family’s life with a Quarz Zoom camera and Super 8 tape, borrowed from a colleague, who bought it in the Foto-Optyka shop.

The film was made during the second pilgrimage of Pope John Paul II to Poland, to which Jerzy Łapkiewicz came from Toruń to Cracow by train. A crowd of the faithful with papal flags and banners, children sitting on their parents’ shoulders. In the distance, there are several-storey blocks of flats belonging to the Tysiąclecia housing estate in Cracow’s Mistrzejowice district. There is the church of St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe along with a field altar set outside, next to which there are church dignitaries. Shots of the gathered people. Some of them enter the roof of a small, one-storey building. Shots of Solidarity flags and a crowd of people with raised hands in a gesture of victory. Between the hands of the gathered, we can see the altar and Pope John Paul II speaking. 

(AT)