Jestem pod wrazeniem Twojej znajomosci Krakowa i jego mieszkancow.Nawet ja sie czegos ciekawego dowiedzialam.Warto bylo tez wspomniec o Muzeum Sztuki Japońskiej Mangga, ktorego Wajda jest tworca.
Andrzej Wajda
05/10/2012 08:08
Andrzej Wajda is a Polish film legend. In 2000, he received an Academy Award "in recognition of five decades of extraordinary film direction," and has also received many other accolades, including the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. He’s considered Poland’s most famous living director. Actually, Roman Polanski is likely better known, but hasn’t lived in the country since he was a young man.
Wajda’s films are Polish classics, and date from around the mid-1950s to the present. He was nominated most recently for an Academy Award in 2007 for a film that depicts Russian atrocities committed in WWII against Polish military officials, the intelligentsia, and others. The film is called “Katyn.” I recommend it as a chance to see Wajda’s directing style, as well as a chance to learn more about a little known, but very significant part of Poland’s history. A lot of it was shot in Kraków, so that’s an added bonus. Believe it or not, I actually saw the building where my old apartment is in one of the scenes. If you can find a copy of “Katyn,” definitely check it out. For many many years, Russia had denied the killing of around 22,000 people in the Katyn massacre. It’s been in the news lately, because a European tribunal has implicated Russia again for obstructing parts of an investigation recently. It was to Katyn that the Polish president and other officials were killed while traveling for a ceremony last year when their plane went down. Anyway, Wajda is known for taking on important and conscience-raising themes throughout his long career, often under the watchful eye of communist authorities up through the 1980s. Here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40odyHxnXNU
At 86, Wajda is still active and is in the process of his next project, a film on Lech Wałęsa. One of the many things that I love about him is that he still lives in Kraków. In fact, several years ago on one of my trips I saw that Wajda was directing a college production at Jagiellonian University. Where else would you find an Academy Award and Cannes Film Festival winner directing a university play?! We might catch a glimpse of him in town if we’re lucky!
