Photo: Łukasz Ostalski/Reporter/East News
As famed Polish film director Andrzej Wajda turns 85, Poland reflects over the highlights of his brilliant career through a series of screenings and other events. On this very special occasion, Poland's President Bronisław Komorowski has announced Wajda will receive with the nation's highest distinction - the Order of the White Eagle
TVN has cited unofficial sources to confirm the president's decision to honour
Andrzej Wajda's achievements just before the director's 85th birthday on Sunday, March 6.
Poland's Andrzej Wajda is one of the most acclaimed directors in the world and a pioneer of the Polish School of Cinema. He received the Oscar for Lifetime in 2000 for his vast repertoire of classic films:
Kanał" / "Canal,
Ashes and Diamonds,
The Promised Land,
Man of Marble, Man of Iron, Pan Tadeusz,
Katyń and
Tatarak.
On the day of his birthday, Andrzej Wajda joins movie lovers at the Kultura cinema in Warsaw with a screenings of two of his lesser-known films, hand-picked by the director himself - Danton (1982), a Cesar Award-winning depiction of the French Revolution starring Gerard Depardieu, and Nastasiabased on Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, an adaptation based on 17th Century Kabuki theatre from Japan. The cinema is also hosting an extended exhibition of posters that promoted Wajda's films abroad.
The previous evening, some of Wajda's closest friends and colleagues assemble at the Kultura cinema - including a number of distinguished figures, such as the Minister of Culture and National Heritage Bogdan Zdrojewski , Warsaw Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, director Krzysztof Zanussi and Adam Michnik, editor-in-chief of the Gazeta Wyborcza darily.
Celebrations of Wajda's milestone year have been ongoing since the end of 2010, including a show of 33 selected films and documentaries at the Museum of Cinema in Łódź. The series ends on March 6 with screenings of
Tatarak and the documentary Andrzej Wajda: Let's Make Pictures!. The event is also accompanied by a poster and photography exhibition related to his works - including glimpses at the director at work behind the scenes. The Poster exhibition continues through March 23.
Andrzej Wajda is a film and theatre director, script writer and set designer born on March 6, 1926 in Suwałki, Poland. He was a student of Kraków's
Academy of Fine Arts between 1946-1949 and later graduated from the
Polish National Film, Television and Theater School in Łódź in 1953 with a major in Directing. He made his debut two years later with the film Pokolenie" / "Generation. The story of youngsters in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation was soon followed by
Kanał" / "Canal (1957) and
Ashes and Diamonds (1958), the latter based on a novel by
Jerzy Andrzejewski. These two films earned Wajda the reputation among the new generation of European filmmakers and gave rise to the famous Polish School of filmmaking, a movement which challenged the national tradition of martyrdom and romantic heroism in art. He has continued to make films through the 21st Century, including the
Katyn - a film about the dishonourable assassination of thousands of Polish soldiers by Soviet troops.
For a full biography, see:
Andrzej Wajda