' ("God's Lining") and ' ("God's Lining. Part Two") are Polish TV series based on the novel with the same title by about the life of
petty szlachta in the backwaters of the
Vilnius Region
Vilnius Region is the territory in present-day Lithuania and Belarus that was originally inhabited by ethnic Baltic tribes and was a part of Lithuania proper, but came under East Slavic and Polish cultural influences over time.
The territory ...
. The first part was aired in 15 episodes during 1997–1998 and covered the time period 1900-1945. The second part was aired in 16 episodes during 2005-2006 and covered the time period 1945-1948. It was the debut work of
Izabella Cywińska
Maria Izabella Cywińska-Michałowska (25 March 1935 – 23 December 2023) was a Polish theatre and film director and film critic. She was the director of the Wojciech Bogusławski Theatre in Kalisz (1970–1973), the director of the New Theatre ...
as film director.
When the airing started, the series caused a considerable controversy across the whole Poland among the people originating from the
Kresy
Eastern Borderlands (), often simply Borderlands (, ) was a historical region of the eastern part of the Second Polish Republic. The term was coined during the interwar period (1918–1939). Largely agricultural and extensively multi-ethnic with ...
region, which the Vilnius Region was part of. They claimed that the series created a distorted, unflattering image of the people from the Vilnius region.
Etymology
The Polish expression "Boża podszewka" ("God's lining") is a dismissive reference to an unimportant, disregarded person. In an afterword to one of the editions of the book Lubkiewicz-Urbanowicz wrote that in Vilnius Region the expression referred to the last, unwanted, child. In the book and film, the protagonist Marianna/Maryśka is exactly that: the last of nine children, physically weak, treated by parents worse than her siblings.
[Tomasz Korpysz]
Boża podszewka
''Idziemy'' June 25, 2017
References
External links
*
*{{imdb-title, 0490715, Boza podszewka. Część druga
1990s Polish television series
2000s Polish television series
Vilnius Region