The article is a review of the book by Natalie Zemon Davis Slaves on Screen. Film and Historical Vzsion, Cambridge Mass. 2000.

The article polemizes with traditional interpretations of a certain phenomenon of culture - the conspiracy theory. The point of reference is provided by Daniel Pipes' analysis of it. Referring in a critical way to the American historian's views, the Author suggests his own, culture oriented view on the notion of conspiracy and the theory of it.

The article presents a dispute on problems connected with the shape and condition of contemporary science. The starting point is provided by the Author's criticism of two cultural formations (postmodernism and religions fundamentalism) based on his own paradigm of enlighted rationalistic fundamentalism. The Author discusses with Ernest Gellner's suggestions, presents a different, constructive interpretation of competing paradigms.

The article deals with the philosophical, epistemological and methodological issues of the contemporary debate on historical policy which has taken place in recent years in Poland between historians, philosophers, politicians and columnists.

The article is a polemics with some traditional concepts of theories of a historical source. The Author of the article takes Marek Henrykowski's assumption of a film being a historical source as a departing point for his own vision of a metaphor of a source and further discussion with some of Hendrykowski's concepts.

Ewa Borzęcka's film Arizona presents contemporary life in a post-collectivised village. This film is an excuse for the author to wander into world of audio-visual historical narrative and the ethic implications of it.

Andrzej Wajda’s films are interesting and serious historical narratives, which enter in dialog both with academic historiography and with other forms of familiarization with the past. Some of Wajda’s historical films are part of the paradigm of the affirmative vision of history. It is a vision that focuses on creating the positive picture of the bygone world, on showing those elements of the past that a given community recognizes as glorious and heroic, worth imitating, commemorating, and honoring, which can be the object of pride or even worship. The affirma-tive vision of history belittles, leaves in the background or omits all those themes from the past that fall outside positive evaluation for various reasons and could distort a consistent favorable picture of the past of a community. In the present article I would like to examine from the comparative perspective of two films, “A Generation [ Pokolenie]” (1954) and “Katyń” (2007). The comparison between Andrzej Wajda’s two films made in the space of fifty years shows that despite the fact that the two pictures were produced in entirely different historico‑cultural contexts, using different film styles, the two screen stories present the affirmation of diametri-cally disparate versions of history, it is the dramatic strategies for and techniques of affirmation of history that remain the same in either case.