From Poland to the World: Annette Insdorf Reflects on Andrzej Wajda

Insdorf_9718-s.jpg, large, Professor Annette Insdorf, courtesy of Prof. Insdorf

How do images carry meaning beyond words – and why does Andrzej Wajda’s cinema continue to resonate across generations and borders? In this interview for Culture.pl, film scholar Annette Insdorf reflects on Wajda’s visual language, his international influence and the emotional force of a cinema that turns seeing into a form of thinking.

Annette Insdorf’s reflections on Wajda grow out of a March 2026 talk she gave at the conference ‘Andrzej Wajda: Student, Teacher, Creator: Educational Inspirations’, organised by the Andrzej Wajda Film Centre. From first encounters with Ashes and Diamonds to decades of teaching his films, she traces the qualities that made Wajda both distinctly Polish and globally influential.

For Insdorf, Wajda’s lasting power lies in the precision of his cinematic language: images that are at once lyrical and unsettling, historically grounded and open to wider interpretation. This interview, part of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute’s year-long centenary celebrations marking Wajda’s birth, explores how his films continue to speak to new audiences through form, emotion and visual thought.

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Andrzej Wajda at the Venice Film Festival, 2013, photo: Gareth Cattermole / Getty Images

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Agnes Dudek: What first attracted you to the cinema of Andrzej Wajda, and what in his work led you to engage with it more deeply over time?

Annette Insdorf: I was a teenager when I went with my parents to a screening of Ashes and Diamonds at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. It might have been the first time that I watched a classic Polish film. I was stunned that the language I’d heard only from my parents and relatives was so rich in telling a cinematic story. It elicited in me a new respect for Polish and for the cinema from this country. I knew I had to see more films by Andrzej Wajda, and I did.

My mother (who was born in Kraków) was teaching at Hunter College in New York when Man of Marble was presented there. Although her specialisation was French literature and film, she went with me to the screening. It was a revelation, blending a kind of Citizen Kane structure with a uniquely Polish story, anchored in an edgy performance by Krystyna Janda. At Wajda’s Columbia University Master Class, he said about this film that Janda auditioned straight out of film academy:

I noticed how she smoked a cigarette – so nervous. After the film was shown at Hunter College, the head of the film department wrote that her female students – who had never worked well – saw in Janda’s performance how to work. That was my biggest success in New York.

Another decisive exposure to Wajda’s work came in 1978, when I was a juror at the Cartagena Film Festival in Colombia. Among the films in competition was The Promised Land, his splendid, thunderous epic set during the transformation of Łódź at the end of the 19th century. It convinced me that Wajda was one of the great masters of contemporary cinema.

AD: You recalled that when you first met Andrzej Wajda, he told you to teach American film rather than his own work. How did you interpret that remark over time, especially given how central his films later became to your teaching?

AI: When he initially said to me at Yale University that I should teach American cinema, I was teaching a seminar on the French New Wave. As I showed my students seminal films like The 400 Blows and Breathless and had them read articles by Truffaut and Godard in Cahiers du Cinéma, I realised that the ‘nouvelle vague’ directors were also deeply inspired by classic American cinema. So even if I used to be a bit condescending towards mainstream Hollywood movies, I started appreciating more and more the work of John Ford, Howard Hawks, Orson Welles, etc.

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‘Tatarak’, directed by Andrzej Wajda, 2008, photo: Akson Studio

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AD: You described your students at Columbia University as ‘mesmerised’ by Wajda’s observations. What was it about the way he spoke about cinema that made such a strong impression on them, and how do students today respond to his films – do they connect first with the historical context, or with something more immediate and emotional?

AI: The Columbia University students who attended Wajda’s Master Class found his candid remarks illuminating. Fortunately, I was taking notes. My favourite recollection of Wajda is this:

Why do I not remember dialogue from films, but images imprint themselves? Our cinema was born under censorship in the mid-1940s. Censorship was after words primarily, believing any ideology must be formulated in words. ‘Our father who art in Heaven…’: the Church does not allow these words to be formulated differently. Marxism too didn’t allow deviations from formulation. Polish cinema tried to find a dialogue with Marxist ideology, to exit this absurd situation. We quickly realised that a cinema of images is harder to censor than words. Images are more expansive and open to interpretation.

Then he showed clips from A Generation, Kanał, Ashes and Diamonds, concluding: ‘There are gorgeous images in the Criterion Collection transfer. So the films will last, longer than a butterfly.’

The students were particularly struck by his remark that, in Warsaw, he lectures his own students about Edward Hopper: ‘He inspires me, giving rise to my images.’ He showed a clip from his upcoming film Tatarak, and then said, ‘Edward Hopper is a narrator of the worlds he creates. Tatarak is directly inspired by a Hopper painting. Krystyna Janda talks about the death of her husband, which the actress had really lived.’

Today, my students respond passionately to his work – less for the historical context than for stylistic choices in the storytelling. I show Ashes and Diamonds in my classes every year, often as representing the choice of black-and-white vs. colour. Wajda’s work elicits discussion of how to create cinematic tension, including the use of deep-focus photography with long takes, chiaroscuro mise-en-scene, striking imagery, and psychological complexity expressed through camera angles and actors’ gestures.

AD: You quoted Martin Scorsese describing Polish cinema as possessing a ‘brutal spirituality’. How do you understand that phrase, and do you see it as a useful way of approaching Wajda’s work, or would you define his sensibility differently?

AI: I understand this phrase as implying a violence that coexists with faith in our history. It’s one of many useful ways to approach Wajda’s work, which cannot be reduced to one realm. While his films about World War II are indeed infused with the brutality of actual occupation (by Germany as well as Russia), movies like Without Anaesthesia or Everything for Sale play on a different register.

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Annette Insdorf speaking at the conference ‘Andrzej Wajda: Student, Teacher, Creator: Educational Inspirations’, March 2026, organised by the Andrzej Wajda Film Centre, photo: Agnes Dudek

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AD: At the conference in Warsaw commemorating Andrzej Wajda, you noted that Wajda played a crucial role in bringing Polish cinema to international attention. What was it about his work – stylistically or thematically – that made it resonate so strongly beyond Poland and position it within global film culture?

AI: The two main reasons are his sophisticated use of cinematic language (whether invoking tension or lyricism), and the specificity of his canvas, often Polish. As the great American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once proposed, the deeper one conveys the details of individual experience, the more universal it becomes.

AD: You also spoke about how Francis Ford Coppola once placed ‘Ashes and Diamonds’ at the top of his personal canon, while Martin Scorsese has described it as part of the very ‘language’ of his filmmaking, even referencing it directly in ‘Mean Streets’. What do you think these filmmakers recognised in Wajda’s work that made it so foundational to their own cinematic thinking?

AI: Both directors mentioned to me the charismatic existential hero Maciek that he created with Zbigniew Cybulski. Maciek became an iconic embodiment of a resistant who loses his reason for being when the war ends. Flawed male protagonists like Maciek would increasingly populate American films from Scorsese’s Taxi Driver to Coppola’s The Conversation.

AD: You mentioned that Wajda learned from American directors such as John Ford and Orson Welles, yet his own films later influenced cinema beyond Poland. How do you understand this kind of exchange – what did he take from American film, and what did he give back to it?

AI: It’s not just Wajda. Film history is filled with transcultural inspirations, whether it’s Italian Neorealism influencing the French New Wave, or the French New Wave infusing 1970s ‘New Hollywood’ cinema.

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Still from ‘Ashes and Diamonds’, directed by Andrzej Wajda, 1958. Pictured: Zbigniew Cybulski and Adam Pawlikowski, photo: Kadr Film Studio / National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute / fototeka.fn.org.pl

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Kadr z filmu "Popiół i diament" w reżyserii Andrzeja Wajdy, 1958. Na zdjęciu: Zbigniew Cybulski i Adam Pawlikowski., fot. Studio Filmowe Kadr/Filmoteka Narodowa/www.fototeka.fn.org.pl

AD: Do you think Wajda’s influence on filmmakers like Scorsese and Coppola was primarily visual – in terms of composition and camera movement – or did it also extend to deeper questions of narrative, character and moral complexity?

AI: Both. American filmmakers have understood the inseparability of form and vision in his work. Let’s look at the more recent example of The Brutalist. When I met the director, Brady Corbet, at the 2025 NY Film Critics Awards, I mentioned connections I felt to Wajda’s masterpieces – which he acknowledged as an inspiration. I told him how the upside-down Statue of Liberty in the opening scene reminded me of Ashes and Diamonds, with its upside-down Christ statue in a bombed-out church during World War II.

AD: You suggested that after seeing ‘Korczak’, Steven Spielberg went on to make ‘Schindler’s List’ and even worked with some of the same collaborators from Wajda’s film. Why do you think he chose to work with the same people, and what might that suggest about Wajda’s influence on his approach to the Holocaust?

AI: Spielberg was wise to work with actors and crew from Korczak, given the authenticity of Wajda’s magnificent black-and-white Holocaust drama. Moreover, both films focus on one wartime hero but offer a collective portrait including crucial secondary roles. For instance it makes sense that Wojciech Klata, who plays Shlomo – one of the only Jewish survivors of Korczak – then plays the stableboy who is one of Amon Goth’s targets in Schindler’s List.

AD: When Wajda received the Honorary Oscar in 2000, did you have any sense of how he himself viewed that recognition – as a personal honour, a tribute to Polish cinema, or something else?

AI: Both.

AD: You quoted Wajda’s idea that ‘the viewer is a challenge and an inspiration in the search for creative truth,’ and that one can demand a great deal from the audience. How do you see this relationship between filmmaker and viewer shaping the experience of his films?

AI: Wajda’s films demand active engagement on the part of the viewer. If we do not watch attentively, we miss the complexity of his vision. I ask my students to begin our discussion with the opening scene, which prepares us for how to watch the rest of the film. In Ashes and Diamonds, the camera introduces Maciek only after tilting down from the cross on top of a church in the background. It ‘descends’ to earth, a fallen universe in which the church offers little salvation. This prepares us for the blistering shot of the upside-down statue of Christ in the burned-out church where Maciek and Krystyna take refuge from a sudden downpour.

AD: You also quoted Andrzej Wajda saying that ‘a cinema of images is harder to censor than words’, and gave the example of the final shot in ‘Kanał’. How did this awareness of censorship shape his visual language, and do you think it led him to develop a more suggestive, open-ended form of storytelling?

AI: Yes, and this is true of many filmmakers working under communism in Poland, or under Franco’s fascist government in Spain. When you are not permitted to say something directly, you must be creative in finding cinematic ways – symbolism or indirection – to suggest your point.

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Łódź Film School, 70th anniversary celebrations in 2018, photo: Tomasz Stańczak / Agencja Gazeta

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AD: You emphasised that even viewers unfamiliar with Polish history can respond to films like ‘Kanał’ through their visual style and emotional force. In works such as ‘Ashes and Diamonds’, Wajda uses techniques like deep focus and low-angle shots that both elevate and entrap his characters. How do these visual strategies allow him to balance historical specificity with a more universal, emotionally accessible cinema?

AI: Wajda does indeed render historical details with a humanistic storytelling style that leads us to identify with characters. His work reminds me of something that Maria Kornatowska – a professor of film criticism and theory at the Łódź Film School – said when I interviewed her for a New York Times article I wrote in 1998 about the famed conservatory from which Wajda graduated: the curriculum was always about ‘creating artists rather than technicians or entertainers’.

AD: You also mentioned interviewing Andrzej Wajda in 1989. Looking back on that conversation, is there anything he said that has stayed with you over the years or that helped shape your understanding of his work?

AI: I just found my New York Times article from July 2, 1989, which actually focused on Wajda’s work in theatre rather than cinema. Two of the plays he directed at Kraków’s Stary Teatr (Old Theatre) were about to be presented at a Performing Arts Festival at SUNY-Purchase in New York. When I saw The Dybbuk in Poland, I was struck by its imagery: a thin veil separated the audience from the actors. As the play began, the Old Theatre stage assumed an almost cinematic depth, reminiscent of Wajda’s films from Ashes and Diamonds to Danton. A cemetery appeared in the background, embodying in spatial terms the presence of the past. Throughout the play, it came to represent the inescapable grip of what one has left behind.

When I asked him about the veil, Wajda pointed to his wife – the gifted set and costume designer, Krystyna Zachwatowicz – and acknowledged, ‘it was her idea. We wanted to create a sense of distance – like in a black-and-white film – as if things were coming to us through a fog’. I thought the idea and its execution were brilliant.

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Stary Theatre in Kraków, photo: Uliana Oliinyk / Getty Images

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AD: You have encountered Wajda not only through his films but also in person and in the classroom. Did your perception of his work change after meeting him, or did the films already contain the person?

AI: While many of his films struck me as full of passion and tension – often with a vibrant presentation of tragic waste and fatalism – in person I found Wajda more elegant and upbeat.

AD: Wajda’s images often linger in memory long after the film ends. Do you have a particular image or moment from his work that has stayed with you over the years in a personal way?

AI: There are a few. From Ashes and Diamonds, it’s the moment after Maciek shoots Szczuka in the street at night: the dying victim takes two steps toward him and embraces his assassin before fireworks explode in the sky above them.

About Annette Insdorf

Annette Insdorf is Professor of Film at Columbia University’s School of the Arts and moderator of the popular ‘Reel Pieces’ series at the 92nd Street Y, where she has interviewed 300 film celebrities. She is the author of several landmark studies, including: Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust (with a foreword by Elie Wiesel); Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieślowski; Francois Truffaut, a study of the French director’s work; Philip Kaufman; and Intimations: The Cinema of Wojciech Has. Her most recent book, Cinematic Overtures: How to Read Opening Scenes, is currently in its fourth printing. She also co-produced the documentary Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire.

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