ANDRZEJ WAJDA

Andrzej Wajda, born in 1926, was a resistance fighter at 16 following the death of his father, a cavalry officer, in the Katyn forest massacre of 1940. Except for scholars of Polish culture or the most serious film buffs, it would be hard for Americans to grasp what a larger-than-life national treasure the legendary Andrzej Wajda has become. While critics may differ as to how he ranks as an artist of cinema, there is almost certainly no one comparable in any other country – no one filmmaker who has contributed so consistently throughout his creative life to the forging of a truly national cinema, who has been so deeply engaged in capturing the past and current history of his country, politically, socially, and psychologically… and all that in a country that has – quite possibly more than any other – cultivated a post-war national cinema in the healthiest sense of the word. It is a cinema that was nurtured by a Communist regime in its Leninist recognition of the power of film as a propaganda tool – in the interests of which it created a film school in Lodz that ironically used its privileged status to become an oasis of creative thought, an isolated window onto foreign artistic influences, and an initial incubator of eventual dissent. As Wajda has put it, “The inconsistency was fantastic.” And Wajda himself embodies a certain kind of inconsistency or ambiguity that survival and eventual independence required. In any case his life’s work is overwhelmingly impressive when viewed not solely through the lens of aesthetic critique but as a lifelong contribution to national self-awareness.

And indeed artistically it is an amazing track record, starting with his “wartime” trilogy, A Generation, Kanal, and Ashes and Diamonds in the mid-50s, continuing through historical epics like Ashes, adaptations of literary classics like The Wedding, and incisive contemporary studies of moral ambiguity like Without Anaesthesia, and the “Solidarity diptych”, Man of Marble and Man of Iron,

Reflecting on his career, Wajda has said: “Now, when we have freedom, so to speak, everyone asks me: OK, but why is it that you were successful while others weren't? Why could you make films while others couldn't? And could these films be right, if they were made in a state film studio and financed with state money? How is this possible? Which means that it would be better if I had spent my life doing nothing. And indeed, these people, who did nothing, have a ready excuse. But what did we want? We only wanted to expand a little the limits of freedom, the limits of censorship, so that films such as Ashes and Diamonds could be made. We never hoped to live to see the fall of the Soviet Union, to see Poland as a free country. [...] If you want to participate in a reality created by an alien power, enforced by an historical situation, then you always risk taking part in some ambiguous game. I saw quite soon that it was better to remain independent, that a Party artist didn't really have more options only because he was allowed to make a film, permitted to do things apparently forbidden to others – quite the opposite. The party controlled its members even more strictly. […] All my life I was determined to have a kind of independence. Which is very funny, because there isn't a person more dependent than a film director. (Excerpt from a speech in the film "The Debit and the Credit".)

When Andrzej Wajda, director of at least 44 films and three-time Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film, was honored in 2000 with an Honorary Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement, the president of the Academy said: “By showing both the loftiest heights and the darkest depths of the European soul, he has inspired all of us to reexamine the strength of our common humanity. Wajda belongs to Poland, but his films are part of the cultural treasure of all mankind." Wajda concluded his brief statement with the words, “I thank the American friends of Poland and my compatriots for helping my country rejoin the family of democratic nations, rejoin Western civilization, its institutions and security structures. My fervent hope is that the only flames people will encounter will be the great passions of the heart – love, gratitude and solidarity.” Wajda then donated his Oscar statuette to the Museum of Jagiellonian University in Krakow, to be displayed alongside his earlier gifts – La Palme d'Or from Cannes and the Golden Lion from Venice – and went right back to making films, surprising his admirers with one of his rare comedies, a delightful adaptation of a period classic called Revenge in 2002, with Roman Polanski in an equally surprising comic role. In 2005 he directed a segment of the multi-part Solidarity, Solidarity. His segment was appropriately entitled, Man of Hope. In February 2006, Andrzej Wajda was given the Berlin International Film Festival's top honor – Golden Bear – in recognition of a career spanning a half-century in which he maneuvered between a repressive communist government and an audience yearning for freedom.

And then what really begins to inspire awe is that fact that Wajda is also one of the great theater directors in his own country and celebrated abroad as well, with 36 years of directing classic and contemporary plays at Krakow’s Stary Teatr (Old Theater), and with productions throughout Europe and beyond, including residencies at the Yale Repertory Theater in New Haven. He was also called upon to direct the ceremonies surrounding the unveiling in 1981 of a monument at the Gdansk Shipyards honoring those killed in the 1970 workers’ protests – a beautifully designed moment of national remembrance. He was a member of "Solidarity" Lech Walesa Council 1981 – 1989, and for one term following the collapse of the regime in 1989 Andrzej Wajda served as a member of the newly constituted Senate. In 1994, after receiving Kyoto Prize, the ‘Japan Oscar’, he founded the Center of Japanese Art and Technology “Manggha” in Krakow designed by Arata Isosaki.

"The Wajda Question", an article by Adam Michnik on the director, is featured in the 35th Anniversary Issue of the literary journal Salmagundi, Fall 2000 - Winter 2001 (Number 128-129), pages 135-179.

For complete Andrzej Wajda’s biography and the list his films, please visit: http://www.wajda.pl/