Małanicz Family Archive

The author of the film is Eugeniusz Małanicz (born in 1904 in Zelczyn). He was an electrical engineer by trade, but a cinematographer and a collector of films and film cameras by passion. In 1925, he founded the touring cinema “Oaza”, touring around the Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship. The cinema went bankrupt after a year, but the passion for the cinema remained with Eugeniusz until his death. In December 1939, he moved with his family to Warsaw and settled in Saska Kępa. An important place in his life was Giby – a village in the Podlaskie Voivodeship, to which he traveled from the late forties. There he rested, kayaked and took pictures. He also died there in 1982. The hood of his beloved car (Hansa) was put on his tombstone.

Giby, summer 1965. The film was made during a family holiday in the summer home of Eugeniusz Małanicz. The wooden house was built by Eugeniusz in the early 1940s and it was initially supposed to be a temporary photographic darkroom, but the owner, delighted with Podlasie and Pomorze Lake, began to come to Giby more and more often and gradually expanded the house. With time, this village became a family asylum and a place where the Małanicz family spent every holiday. The last will of the dying Eugeniusz was to die in Giby, to which he was transported from Warsaw and where he died under the care of his daughter, Elżbieta Małanicz-Onoszko in 1982. 

Eugeniusz’s son, Janusz Małanicz, who drives a car, stops next to his wife, Anna, and their daughter, Kasia, who wait for him by the road. Anna and Kasia wave at the sight of a moving car (Škoda 440 Spartak). Janusz affectionately greets his wife and daughter. The family gets into the car and leaves. There is a road sign at the entrance to the village of Giby, to which someone has put a piece of paper, creating the inscription “Giby Story”. The car goes through the surrounding fields and forests towards Pomorze Lake. The family gets out of the car parked by the lake. A shot of a wooden house on which there is a windmill, constructed by Eugeniusz, generating electricity. The owner of the wooden house tidies up the yard and a boat moored by the lake. Kasia and her dad stand near the water edge and watch their grandfather sail in a small sailboat. Janusz with Anna and Kasia sail a sailboat, the girl plays, pours water from the lake into a cup. Anna and her daughter wash the dishes in front of the house. Eugeniusz tries to start a chainsaw in the yard. The man rows a boat. Janusz’s cousin, Leszek Surowiec, gets undressed on a pier. Kasia plays with a fishing rod on the pier, Janusz accompanied by his mother, Ludwika Małanicz née Mandowska, pulls out a caught fish from the water, which he later eviscerates. Anna and Kasia wash their clothes in a large bowl by the lake. Eugeniusz and his wife, Ludwika, have breakfast in front of the house, after a while their son, Janusz, joins them. Kasia poses by a parked Škoda, plays with a toy truck and swings on a swing. Kasia and her mother sit at the table in front of the house. Shots of the Škoda parked by the road. Close-ups of roadside posts. Kasia and her mother swim in the lake. The girl sits on an inflatable mattress. Shots of a man on a tractor and wooden houses. 

(AT)