Oscar-winning Polish film director Andrzej Wajda dies
October 10, 2016
Renowned Polish director Andrzej Wajda has died in hospital after a short illness. He was considered Poland's pre-eminent filmmaker.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/A. Keplicz
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Andrzej Wajda's most important films
Poland's most renowned filmmaker, Andrzej Wajda chronicled the upheavals of his country and fought for freedom. He died on October 9 at the age of 90. Here are some of his most memorable works.
Image: Berlinale 2008/R. Hübner
Farewell to a great European filmmaker
Over six decades, Andrzej Wajda chronicled the history of his country. His works received numerous awards at international film festivals. He was also awarded an honorary Oscar in 2000. Wajda often visited Berlin - like here during the premiere of his film "Katyn" during the 2008 Berlin Film Festival. He died on October 9, 2016, at the age of 90. DW presents a survey of his life's work in photos.
Image: Berlinale 2008/D. M. Deckbar
Debut: 'A Generation'
Topics that were to dominate filmmaker Andrzej Wajda's entire career already appeared in his very first film in 1955. "A Generation" is about Poland under German occupation during World War II. At the same time, the protagonists also looked towards the postwar era. Communism and capitalism, resistance and opportunism - these themes already played a role in the director's debut feature.
Wajda achieved world fame with his third film, "Ashes and Diamonds" (1958), set on May 8, 1945 - the day of Germany's capitulation. In this realist film, Wajda reflected on what the events meant for Poland. The movie is also an exploration of inner conflicts within Polish society, torn between communist dictatorship and the desire for freedom.
Image: picture alliance/United Archives/IFTN
A great European filmmaker
Following some other important works in the 60s, Andrzej Wajda emerged as an internationally acclaimed and respected director in the mid 70s. In 1974, he shot "The Promised Land," set in the city of Lodz, where Wajda had completed his studies at the renowned film academy many years earlier.
Image: picture alliance/PAP
Exploration of current society
A new chapter in the career of the Polish director started in 1977 with the film "Man of Marble." Here, Wajda portrayed a character suffering under the socialist state-directed economic system. The interplay of fiction and documentary scenes is truly impressive.
Image: Imago
'The Orchestra Conductor'
Three years later, Wajda (right) directed "The Orchestra Conductor," a rather personal work that explored the relationship between art and reality, starring British theater actor John Gielgud along with Polish actress Krystyna Janda.
One year later, the director finished his next masterpiece. "Man of Iron" (1981) is all about the radical political transformation of his home country: the activities of the Solidarity labor movement and the state of emergency. Activist Lech Walesa even visited the team during the shooting of the film that was awarded the prestigious Palme d'Or during the Cannes Film Festival.
Image: Imago
Work in exile
As a result of his political views, Wajda was forced to work outside Poland. But even while in exile he proved to be a highly successful filmmaker. His film "Danton," depicting the intrigues and racketeering of the French Revolution, feels like a thriller about politics and terror, passion and idealism. It starred the then young French actor Gérard Depardieu.
Image: Imago
'A Love in Germany'
The Polish filmmaker also directed his next work in exile. In 1983, Wajda shot his film "A Love in Germany" in West Berlin and the southern federal state of Baden-Württemberg. Once again, this is all about German-Polish history and the relations between the two nations. Starring in the film is Polish actor Daniel Olbrychski and German actor Armin Mueller-Stahl.
Image: picture-alliance/KPA
Back in his home country
After the end of the Cold War, Andrzej Wajda returned to work mainly in his home country. In the mid-90s, he directed "Holy Week," a drama about the fate of a Polish-Jewish woman during World War II. Here, the director showed what it meant to be of Jewish origin during the German occupation, even for someone who's not particularly religious.
Image: Imago
'Walesa. Man of Hope'
In one of his last works, to be followed by "Afterimage" in 2016, Wajda referred to his most successful films, "Man of Marble" and "Man of Iron," all describing historical upheavals in Poland. In "Walesa. Man of Hope," he portrayed the life of electrician Lech Walesa who became the union leader at the Lenin dockyard before becoming President of Poland.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Warzawa
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Wajda had recently been hospitalized and died Sunday night at the age of 90, his colleague, film director Jacek Bromski said.
Born in March 1926 in Suwalki, Poland, Wajda was a film and theater director, script writer and set designer. He served in the Polish resistance movement in World War II while a teenager.
Polish director Andrzej Wajda in 2013Image: Getty Images/AFP/G. Bouys
For his film work, Wajda won an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2000. Four of his films, including "Man of Iron," were nominated for Oscars.
By using bold imagery, Wajda avoided the attention of state censors during the Soviet era and presented strong indictments of war and political oppression.
A graduate of the Polish National Film, TV and Theater School in Lodz in 1953 with a major in Directing, he made his first film, "Generation," two years later about two youngsters in Nazi-occupied Poland joining a Soviet armed organization.
He collaborated with artist Andrzej Wróblewski for his "Executions" series, again about Nazi-occupied Poland.
Wajda gained recognition in Europe with his next two films, "Canal" and "Ashes and Diamonds," telling the stories of folk heroes during and after the war, challenging the national tradition of romantic heroism in art. The scene in Canal when the main characters reach an exit into the Vistula River, only to find it barred, became one of the most famous in Polish cinema. Ashes and Diamonds was a complex study of conflicting loyalties on the last day of World War II.
Wajda's 1958 film 'Ashes and Diamonds'Image: picture alliance/United Archives/IFTN
The 1960 film "Innocent Sorcerers" was a story about rebellious and alienated young people in the jazz age, made at the same time as Jean-Luc Godard's "A bout de souffle" (Breathless).
His most acclaimed films were "Man of Marble," about an exemplary worker of the Stalinist period of socialist Poland, in 1977 and "Man of Iron" in 1981, about Solidarity labor movement leader Lech Walesa, which won the Cannes Palme d'Or.
Under pressure from the state over his work, Wajda emigrated to France where he directed a historical epic, "Danton," starring Gerard Depardieu, and the tragic romance "A Love in Germany," dealing with the affair between a German woman and a Polish prisoner of war.
French exile
Wajda lived in Paris until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. When he returned he was elected to parliament and appointed head of Warsaw's leading theater.
In his 1980s book "Double Vision," Wajda lamented the lack of interest in Polish films in the West. Some of his own films were not released in the US and his profile rarely reached that of compatriot Roman Polanski.
Polanski said that while Wajda was known for his movies on political subjects, he also possessed a 19th century Romantic spirit, evident in films such as "Siberian Lady Macbeth," the British-made "Gates to Paradise" and the sweepingly historical "Pan Tadeusz," made in the late 1990s.
His 2009 film "Sweet Rush" was a film about filmmaking. His last movie "Afterimage," a biopic about an avant-garde artist, was recently chosen as Poland's official entry for the 2016 Oscar for best foreign language film.
Wajda is survived by his fourth wife, theatre costume designer and actress Krystyna Zachwatowicz, and by a daughter from his third marriage to actress Beata Tyszkiewicz.
