Andrzej Wajda

Andrzej Wajda, Warsaw (Poland), May 2006

Andrzej Wajda (born March 6, 1926 in Suwałki) is a Polish film director. Laureate of an honorary Oscar, he is one of the most prominent members of the Polish Film School.

Life and work

A major figure of world and Eastern European cinema after World War II, Wajda has made his reputation as a sensitive and uncompromising chronicler of his country's political and social evolution. Once dubbed a symbol for a besieged country, Wajda is known for drawing from Poland's history to suit his tragic sensibility—crafting an oeuvre of work that devastates even as it informs.

The son of a Polish cavalry officer who was killed by the Soviets in 1940, Wajda fought in the Home Army against the Germans when he was still a teenager. After the war, he studied to be a painter at Kraków's Academy of Fine Arts before entering the Łódź Film School.

On the heels of his apprenticeship to director Aleksander Ford, Wajda was given the opportunity to direct his own film. With A Generation (1955), the first-time director poured out his disillusionment over jingoism, using as his alter ego a young, James Dean-style antihero played by Zbigniew Cybulski.

Wajda went on to make two more increasingly accomplished films, which further developed the antiwar theme of A Generation: Kanal (1956) and Ashes and Diamonds (1958), also starring Cybulski.

While capable of turning out mainstream commercial fare (often dismissed as "trivial" by his critics), Wajda was more interested in works of allegory and symbolism, and certain symbols (such as setting fire to a glass of liquor, representing the flame of youthful idealism that was extinguished by the war) recur often in his films.

In 1967, Cybulski was killed in a train accident, whereupon the director articulated his grief with what is considered his most personal film, Everything for Sale (1969).

Wajda's later devotion to Poland's burgeoning Solidarity movement was manifested in Man of Marble (1976) and Man of Iron (1981), with Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa appearing as himself in the latter film. The director's involvement in this movement would prompt the Polish government to force Wajda's production company out of business. In 1983 he directed Danton , a film set in 1794 (Year Two) dealing with the Post-Revolutionary Terror. The film carries sharp parallels with the Post-Revolutionary period in Russia as well as with fascist Germany.

In the early 1990s, he was elected a senator and also appointed artistic director of Warsaw's Teatr Powszechny. He continued to make films, addressing the topic of World War II in 1993's The Crowned-Eagle Ring and 1996's Holy Week.

In 1997, the director went in a different direction with Miss Nobody, a coming-of-age drama that explored the darker and more spiritual aspects of a relationship between three high-school girls.

Three years later, at the 2000 Academy Awards, Wajda was presented with an honorary Oscar for his numerous contributions to cinema; he subsequently donated the award to Kraków's Jagiellonian University. In February 2006, Wajda received an honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Andrzej Wajda has been married four times. His second wife was Zofia Żuchowska (she is buried in Radom). His third wife was popular actress Beata Tyszkiewicz with whom he has a daughter Karolina (born 1967). His fourth and current wife is actress and costume designer Krystyna Zachwatowicz.

Currently, Wajda is working on a film about the Katyn massacre, in which some of his family lost their lives.

Filmography

• The Bad Boy (Zły chłopiec, 1950)
• The Pottery at Ilza (Ceramika ilzecka, 1951)
• A Generation (Pokolenie, 1954)
• Towards the Sun (Idę do słońca, documentary on Xawery Dunikowski, 1955)
• Kanal (1956)
• Ashes and Diamonds (Popiół i diament 1958)
• Lotna (1959)
• Innocent Sorcerers (Niewinni czarodzieje, 1960)
• Siberian Lady Macbeth (Powiatowa lady Makbet, 1961)
• Samson (1961)
• Love at Twenty (L'amour à vingt ans, 1962)
• Ashes (Popioły, 1965)
• Everything For Sale (Wszystko na sprzedaż, 1968)
• Roly Poly (Przekładaniec, 1968)
• Gates to Paradise (Bramy Raju, 1968)
• Hunting Flies (Polowanie na muchy, 1969)
• The Birch Wood (Brzezina, 1970)
• Landscape After the Battle (Krajobraz po bitwie, 1970)
• Pilate and Others (Pilatus und andere, 1971)
• The Wedding (Wesele, 1972)
• The Promised Land (Ziemia obiecana, 1974)
• The Line of Shadow (Smuga cienia, 1976)

• Man of Marble (Człowiek z marmuru, 1976)
• Rough Treatment (Bez znieczulenia, 1978)
• The Maids of Wilko (Panny z Wilka, 1979)
• The Orchestra Conductor (Dyrygent, 1980)
• Man of Iron (Człowiek z żelaza, 1981)
• Danton (1983)
• Love in Germany (Eine Liebe in Deutschland, 1983)
• A Chronicle of Amorous Incidents (Kronika wypadków miłosnych, 1985)
• The French as seen by... (Proust contre la déchéance, 1988)
• The Possessed (Les possédes, 1988)
• Korczak (1990)
• The Crowned-Eagle Ring (Pierścionek z orłem w koronie, 1992)
• Nastasja (1994)
• The Holy Week (Wielki Tydzień, 1995)
• Miss Nobody (Panna Nikt, 1996)
• Pan Tadeusz (1998)
• The Condemnation of Franciszek Klos (Wyrok na Franciszka Kłosa, 2000)
• Broken Silence (Przerwane milczenie, 2002)
• The Revenge (Zemsta, 2002)

Man of Iron won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1981. Three of Wajda's works—The Promised Land, The Maids of Wilko, and Man of Iron—have been nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign-language film. In 2000, Wajda received an honorary Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

See also

• Cinema of Poland
• List of Polish language films
• Radom

Bibliographies

• Wajda bibliography (via UC Berkeley)

External links

• Andrzej Wajda's official website
• Andrzej Wajda at IMDb
• Template:Nndb name
• Template:Peoples Archive
• Unspoken Cinema essay on Maids Of Wilko
• Ewa Mazierska's essay on A Generation for the Criterion Collection DVD
• Paul Coates's essay on Ashes and Diamonds for the Criterion Collection DVD
• John Simon's essay on Kanal for the Criterion Collection DVD