W.Ż. |
2006-02-22 |
Andrzej Wajda, Poland's most famous
film director, received a Golden Bear for lifetime achievement at
this year's Berlinale film festival Feb. 15.
"Cinema is
100 years old, I have been making movies for 52 years," 80-year-old
Wajda said prior to the grand gala and declared he intended to
complete his latest project-a movie about the Katyn massacre-still
this year. "I would still like to compete for a normal Golden Bear."
Wajda's own father was murdered in Katyn.
"This is the movie
I have been waiting to make the longest," Wajda said. "It could not
go into production until Gorbachev brought to Poland and handed over
to Lech Wałęsa documents [from Stalin-era secret Soviet archives]
confirming that the Katyn massacre had been committed by the NKVD.
Then I searched for literary material on which the film could be
based. I never found it and so I went for an original
screenplay."
Wajda adds the movie will not only deal with the
massacre, but also the lie perpetuated for years after the war that
the thousands of Polish officers had been gunned down in the Katyn
Woods by the Nazis in 1941 and not the Soviets in 1940.
Wajda
received the Golden Bear statuette from Dieter Kosslick, the
director of Berlinale. Film critic Peter Cowie gave a brief speech
about the laureate and Wajda received a standing ovation. During the
ceremony, Berlinale viewers saw Pilate and Others, a movie Wajda
made in 1972 for the German TV station ZDF. It was inspired by
Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita, which years later
Polish readers chose as the most important work in Russian
literature.
Asked why he chose the movie for the screening,
Wajda explained he believed he owed something to it, as it had never
opened in theaters or had been promoted in any way. In Poland,
Pilate and Others was only shown for a few days, after which it was
banned, apparently after an intervention by the then prime minister,
Piotr Jaroszewicz. The movie supposedly offended religious
sensibilities.
Born in Suwałki March 6, 1926, Wajda is
regarded as one of the main creators of what is known as the Polish
film school. In 1949, he enrolled at the direction department of the
State Theater Academy in Łódź. He took the first steps on the
directing path as an assistant to a veteran of Polish cinema,
Aleksander Ford, in a few films they made together. As an
independent director, Wajda debuted in 1953 with the movie A
Generation. The picture receives a lot of criticism today from
Wajda's opponents, who see it as an apology for the communist armed
underground during World War II. The movie nonetheless opens Wajda's
"war triptych," which won him international acclaim. The two other
parts are Canal from 1956, a stirring recount of the final days of
the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 (Special Jury Award at the Festival in
Cannes) and Ashes and Diamonds, made two years later and portraying
the lives of war heroes in the complicated reality of early postwar
Poland (FIPRESCI Prize at the International Film Festival in
Venice).
In the 1960s and 70s, Wajda made a sequence of film
adaptations of prominent works in Polish literature. In 1965 he made
The Ashes, a historical drama set in the Napoleonic era and based on
the novel by Stefan Żeromski. The year 1972 brought The Wedding, an
adaptation of the national play by Stanisław Wyspiański. Two years
later came The Promised Land, a drama about early capitalism in the
city of Łódź, based on the novel by Nobel Prize winner Władysław
Reymont. Wajda revisited pearls of national literature in 1999 by
filming Pan Tadeusz: The Last Foray in Lithuania, a movie version of
the most famous national epic poem by Adam Mickiewicz. Finally, 2002
brought The Revenge, an adaptation of the most popular comedic play
by Aleksander Fredro.
In 1976, Wajda made Man of Marble, one
of the most important movies about the postwar history of Poland,
devoted to the tragic years of Stalinism. The film was awarded the
FIPRESCI prize at the Cannes Film Festival. The sequel, Man of Iron
(1981), dealt with the events of August '80 on the Polish Coast and
the rise of Solidarity. It won Wajda the Palme d'Or in
Cannes.
Wajda received a number of other prestigious awards
at the most important film events. Holy Week won him the Berlin
Silver Bear for artistic contributions. The Promised Land and The
Maids of Wilko were nominated for an Oscar as Best Foreign Language
Films. In San Sebastian, Wajda received the Silver Shell for The
Wedding and FIPRESCI for Orchestra Conductor. He is a laureate of
the French César for Danton. Wajda also won two Gold Medals at the
International Film Festival in Moscow, for The Birch Wood in 1971
and The Promised Land in 1975, while Landscape After the Battle
brought him a Golden Globe at the festival in Milan.
In 2000,
Wajda received a lifetime achievement Oscar. Earlier, his legacy was
acknowledged in 1990 with a Felix statuette from the European Film
Awards, an honorary Golden Lion in Venice in 1998 and in 1999, a
Crystal Iris at the International Film Festival in
Brussels.
During a career spanning half a century, Wajda has
launched a number of outstanding actors. Names inseparably connected
with Wajda include such Polish movies stars as Zbigniew Cybulski
(dubbed Poland's James Dean, he died tragically in 1967), Krystyna
Janda, Daniel Olbrychski, Wojciech Pszoniak, Andrzej Seweryn and
Beata Tyszkiewicz. |
Reproduced with permission from | | |
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