| Wajda Roars | |
| 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 |  |
| Click on the logo for current issue of Poland's English language weekly |