Andrzej Wajda - Freedom in Polish cinematography (39/222)

Описание: To listen to more of Andrzej Wajda’s stories, go to the playlist:    • Andrzej Wajda (Film director)  

Polish film director Andrzej Wajda (1926-2016), whose début films portrayed the horror of the German occupation of Poland, won awards at Cannes which established his reputation as storyteller and commentator on Polish history. He also served on the national Senate from 1989-91. [Listener: Jacek Petrycki]

TRANSCRIPT: Our cinema relied on two great individualities or, at least, personalities: Aleksander Ford and Wanda Jakubowska who had just come out of Auschwitz. Before the war, she had been a left-wing activist and had started making her first film. Because her film 'The Last Stage' was a success, one of the most successful first Polish films, she suddenly became a very important figure in our cinema. Young people gathered around these two individualities to make films with them. But there was also a group of those, who made up this group, this discursive film club, among whom were Jerzy Toeplitz, Antoni Bohdziewicz, the camerman Stanisław Wohl and a few others, and they suddenly came to the conclusion that a film school ought to be set up. This was very odd in a country where two, three films were being made, and there were several film directors who in fact could have come to the conclusion that there was no reason, no need to start a school at a time when more films weren't being made; when we start to make more films, then we'll open a school. No, it was astonishing that these film-makers who were still young and full of energy and ideas decided to start a school for the sake of the future of Polish cinematography. And I have to say that this is a very significant moment because together with us students at this school, they were learning how to teach. Jerzy Toeplitz was a highly educated man, he had lectured on the history of art. Antoni Bohdziewicz was more of a radio director but he had a sound understanding of how a work of art or a film were created. Stanisław Wohl was an expert director of photography who had learned his trade in Paris. Because of this, his students quickly mastered the difficult art of shooting. And this is how the school was set up as a part of our cinematography. There is a second, very important moment since people often ask: how did it happen that the cinema in Poland had more freedom than in other countries, and that in Poland films were made that in other cinematographies in countries occupied by the Soviets, by the Soviet Union, like Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania their films were far more restricted by censors. But our older colleagues, especially Ford and Jakubowska, considered themselves to be Party activists and didn't want a situation in which someone who had been nominated by the Party as the director of cinematography to be lecturing them on what was politically acceptable and what wasn't. They considered that they were already an authority in these matters. Therefore, from the very beginning, they strove to set up creative groups which were actually comprised of film producers but at the head of each of these groups there was a film director not a producer, because the producer was the state. They imagined that these two were quite enough. Initially, there were two teams which later multiplied. And what kind of relationship developed between the authorities and us, the people who were making the films?