Double Vision: My Life in Film by Andrzej Wajda provides an informal, accessible, and concise glance into the creative process of one of Poland’s most renowned filmmakers. Through a series of humorous, honest, and insightful anecdotes, Wajda presents an animated reflection of his pioneering, and largely self-taught, experience as a fledgling director during the nascent […]
Part coming of age story set in the aftermath of the Warsaw Uprising, and part personal testament by lead actress Krystyna Janda on her husband, Edward Klosinski’s battle with cancer during filming, Andrzej Wajda’s poignant, if disarticulated Sweet Rush, on the surface, suggests kinship with the metacinema of Abbas Kiarostami in exploring the interpenetration between […]
A successful international journalist, Jerzy Michalowski (Zbigniew Zapasiewicz), makes a guest appearance on a televised variety show to reflect on his life and work. Candid and self-assured, Jerzy’s evasive comments on the limited freedom of the Polish press on domestic issues causes concern to a programming official who believes that the serious topics discussed in […]
Agnieszka (Krystyna Janda) is a determined and tenacious film student who believes that she has found the ideal subject for her diploma film: an investigative documentary on Mateusz Birkut (Jerzy Radziwilowicz), a postwar working-class hero who fell into government disfavor and disappeared into obscurity. Her producer (Boguslaw Sobczuk) reluctantly agrees to give her 21 days […]
An introductory shot of a solemn, aging German aristocrat named Bucholz (Andrzej Szalawski) gazing abstractedly out the window of his opulently furnished, baroque estate in morning prayer that is intercut with cutaway images of workers emerging from crude shantytowns built alongside the railroad tracks establishes the polarized economic climate of late nineteenth century Lodz, as […]
Landscape After the Battle opens to the narratively silent symphony of a concentration camp liberation, as haggard yet jubilant prisoners run out into the snow-covered open field, break the windows of the internment barracks, impulsively undress and toss their degrading uniforms onto a blazing bonfire, and rejoice at the arrival of the Allied soldiers. A […]