Kazimierz Kutz directed more than twenty feature films, and six of them are set in Upper Silesia. Three of those six, "Sól ziemi czarnej" (The Salt of the Black Earth), "Perła w koronie" (Pearl in the Crown) and "Paciorki jednego różańca" (Beads of One Rosary), are called the Silesian triptych or trilogy. A viewer who knows present-day Katowice will recognise the housing estates, mine buildings and streets in them, and one who does not gets a ready-made list of places to visit.

The boy from Szopienice

Kutz was born on 16 February 1929 in Szopienice, now a district of Katowice. He was the son of a railwayman and Silesian insurgent and grew up in a working-class home. He died in Warsaw on 18 December 2018. He long bore the surname Kuc, because in 1937 his father Polonised the family name, and the director returned to the form Kutz in 1957. He studied directing at the film school in Łódź, and spent his first years of work as an assistant to Andrzej Wajda. He founded the "Silesia" Film Unit in 1971 and headed it until 1978. In later years he was also a member of parliament, but that is a topic for an entirely different story.

He returned to Silesian subjects only in the second half of the 1960s. He recalled that it was his last chance to find his own voice. The inspiration was his father's story and literature about the region, and the result was a screenplay that was met with mockery in Warsaw. One member of the committee assessing screenplays reportedly claimed that the Silesian Uprisings had never happened. Permission to shoot was secured with the help of General Jerzy Ziętek, then a member of the Council of State. Kutz later said that he wanted to contribute to the creation of an "artistic mythology of Silesia".

The Salt of the Black Earth: an uprising among the familoks

The film of 1969 tells of the second Silesian uprising in 1920. Its hero is Gabriel, the youngest of the seven Basista brothers, who falls in love with a German nurse. The Silesian dialect was an important criterion in casting: Olgierd Łukaszewicz knew it, while Jan Englert spoke a stylised Polish. Soldiers from Prudnik played the insurgents and the German units.

The locations are scattered across the whole conurbation. One source lists, in Katowice, Nikiszowiec, Szopienice, the Lutheran Church of the Saviour on ks. bp. Bednorza Street and the Uthemann Steelworks, and in addition Lipiny, Chropaczów and the Kolonia Marcina in Świętochłowice, the Karmańskie estate in Ruda Śląska, and Bytom and Siemianowice. Another adds Giszowiec to this list, so the sources disagree here. The premiere took place on 29 January 1970 in Katowice, and in 1970 the film was Poland's official candidate for the Oscar for best foreign-language film.

The reception was mostly very good, but there were also reservations about the way history was shown. The critic Krzysztof Teodor Toeplitz accused the film of reducing the uprisings to a pro-Polish outburst, and Jan F. Lewandowski pointed to the lack of perspective of people who stood on both sides. Ilona Copik replied that the author's choice stemmed from the hope that Silesian identity would gain recognition in the realities of communist Poland. The dispute therefore concerned the approach, not the places themselves.

Pearl in the Crown: a strike underground

The film of 1971 is based on a real miners' strike. The inspiration was the strike at the Giesche mine in 1937, in which three thousand miners took part, but the action of the film is set in August 1934 and in a fictional mine called "Zygmunt". The miners declare a sit-in strike because the owners, German entrepreneurs, want to close the plant. Everything is led by Hubert Siersza, played by Franciszek Pieczka, and the role of Wichta was played by an amateur, Łucja Kowolik.

The mine was built not in a Łódź studio but in the lamp room of the "Wieczorek" mine at Nikiszowiec, as stated by both the article on the film and the director's biography. Bishop Herbert Bednorz refused to make a church available, so the church scenes were shot on the grounds of the Lutheran parish. On set about 600 kilograms of soot were used daily to paint the actors and extras. By 15 February 1972, in Katowice cinemas alone, the film had been seen by about 150,000 viewers, although only five copies were in circulation. In 2018 a digitally restored copy had its premiere.

Beads of One Rosary: the last film about Giszowiec

The third part, from 1979, was based on the novella "Tego domu już nie ma" (This House Is No More) by Albin Siekierski. The action takes place in Giszowiec, where an estate of old miners' houses is to give way to prefabricated blocks. The retired miner Habryka, played by Augustyn Halotta, refuses to move out. Kutz had a personal experience here: in the early 1970s his family left their house in Szopienice and moved into a block of flats, and the director recalled that his father lasted two weeks there.

The filming took place in the colony of miners' houses in Giszowiec, which at that time faced the same fate. The film had trouble with the censors but was eventually cleared for distribution. The house that is the centre of the plot was indeed slated for demolition in 1979, but the monument conservator halted the work and the building stands at Przyjazna 28 in Katowice. Ilona Copik wrote years later that thanks to the film the matter of Giszowiec became widely known, and stubborn people saved the estate from complete destruction. For this film Kutz received the Golden Lions at the Festival of Polish Feature Films in 1980.

Where to watch Kutz today

A good place to meet the director's films is the Rialto Cinema-Theatre in Katowice. It was there on 27 November 2017 that the repeat premiere of the digitally reconstructed "Sól ziemi czarnej" took place. After watching the films one can seek out the locations. Two of these places, Nikiszowiec and Giszowiec, survived as mining estates, although Giszowiec was largely demolished, as the film recalls.