Coates provides for the first time in English a theoretically sophisticated overview of the cinema of People's Poland.... not merely an indispensable work, but a landmark in Polish Cinema Studies.

Paul Coates is reader and director of the film studies department at the University of Aberdeen. His books include, The Story of the Lost Reflection: The Alienation of the Image in Western and Polish Cinema (1985) and Lucid Dreams: the Films of Krzysztof Kieslowski (1999).