People Who Commune with Nature Become Better: An Interview with Bożena & Jan Walencik

Zdjęcie z albumu "Saga prastarej Puszczy. Opowieść filmowa" Bożeny i Jana Walencików, fot. © Jan Walencik, dzięki uprzejmości autorów, default, Bożena Walencik & Sonia the lynx, photo from album ‘Saga of an Ancient Forest: A Film Tale’ by Bożena & Jan Walencik, photo: © Jan Walencik / courtesy

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Creators of auteur films that popularise natural science, the Walenciks are partners in both work and life. Their greatest achievements include the nature series ‘Heartbeat of a Primaeval Forest’ and ‘Saga of an Ancient Forest’ – both devoted to Białowieża Forest. This time, they tell Culture.pl about the presence of animals in literature, photography and film.

Janusz R. Kowalczyk: Stories about animals can be found in every school reading list. We started with the adventures of the likeable characters in ‘Puc, Bursztyn i goście’ (Puc, Bursztyn & Guests) by Jan Grabowski, followed by ‘Rogaś z Doliny Roztoki’ (Rogaś from the Roztoka Valley) by Maria Kownacka, and the touching story ‘O Psie, który Jeździł Koleją’ (The Dog that Travelled by Train) by Roman Pisarski, and finally moved on to much more serious books, such as those by Alina and Czesław Centkiewicz.

Jan Walencik: Sorry to interrupt, but in terms of the range of titles, all those are more from our school days than the present.

JRK: Yes, I started with reading lists from the 1960s and 1970s, hoping we could expand this canon with additional titles that continue to nurture a young person’s proper relationship with the natural world. Which literary works would be worth adding?

JW: I suppose what I’m about to say might sound unconventional. As a young man in my hometown of Kazimierz Dolny, I had the opportunity to familiarise myself with the Soviet Kalendarz Przyrodniczy (Nature Calendar). It was filled with everything that smelled of the East, such as the sands of the Kyzyl Kum desert and the harsh climate of Siberia. I naturally cared very little about the Young Pioneer themes of the USSR woven into it, but the entire work helped me understand the importance of phenology – that is, the existence of various natural phenomena in time. I discovered the calendar by chance in a pile of discarded books.

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‘Rogaś from the Roztoka Valley’ by Maria Kownacka, cover illustration by Janusz Grabiański, Nasza Księgarnia, 1961, photo: artist’s family archive

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I remember a book that I read, or rather looked at, as a young child, titled Ptasi Zegar (A Bird’s Clock). It featured illustrations of birds and short stories describing the times when they began their trills. It was a wonderful way to make an impression on a young mind. Later, I came across Maria Kownacka’s Rogaś. At a young age, I also acquired the Polish Kalendarz Przyrody by Henryk Sandner and Zdzisława Wójcik. That was quite a sophisticated publication for young people. As you can see, the variability of natural phenomena has attracted me ever since I was a child. Today, I can say that those seasons – early spring, spring, early summer and late summer – seemed a little different from what we’re experiencing now. Spring passes in the blink of an eye, as if winter were turning straight into the height of summer. These boundaries are now slowly blurring.

JRK: Do we have books that could be called Polish nature classics?

JW: We should undoubtedly mention Adolf Dygasiński with his Gody Życia (Feasts of Life), numerous natural-science books by Władysław Korsak, and Józef Weyssenhoff’s Soból i Panna (The Sable and the Maiden).

JRK: ‘The Sable and the Maiden’? Setting aside the romantic subplots, it mostly centres on taking part in hunts...

JW: That’s right, but I was referring solely to the nature values of this novel, not to the plot, which was fashioned in human terms. For me, however, nature literature is mainly connected with photography. Włodzimierz Puchalski opens my pantheon of authors with Wyspa Kormoranów (The Island of Cormorants) and Bezkrwawe Łowy (Bloodless Hunt). After reading these books, I became convinced that instead of carrying out chemical experiments inspired by Stefan Sękowski’s Moje Laboratorium (My Laboratory), during which I almost burned down my house in Kazimierz, I should dedicate myself to popularising nature through films and photography. Since biology has always been one of my main interests, I started devouring Puchalski’s books.

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Jan Walencik, photo from the album ‘Saga of an Ancient Forest: A Film Tale’ by Bożena & Jan Walencik, photo: © Jan Walencik / courtesy of the authors

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A photo from Bożena and Jan Walencik’s The Saga of the Ancient Forest, in the photo: Jan Walencik, photo: © Bożena Walencik, courtesy of the authors

I was earning a bit of money at my uncle’s place in Radom, at his sculpture workshop, which was partly a haberdashery because that’s how things were back then. Incidentally, my grandfather, Zygmunt Czyżewski, also sculpted in Nałęczów – the statue of King Casimir the Great, carved by his chisel, is still displayed in the museum in Kazimierz today. Anyway, while staying with my uncle Zdzisław Czyżewski, who was Zygmunt’s son, I visited all the antique shops in Radom looking for books on filming and photographing nature. Later, other authors followed, including Professor Władysław Strojny from Wrocław and István Homoki-Nagy, who made many films about Lake Balaton and other notable places after World War II. To this day, I still have his well-loved and well-thumbed through book Secrets of Forests, Mountains and Rushes.

Bożena Walencik: You read so much …

JW: It wasn’t reading – it was devouring. I won’t hide that I was less interested in literature in terms of language and colourful descriptions and more in the combination of text and photography. For me, these served as examples of the right way to popularise nature. I learned from these books how to translate three-dimensional reality into two-dimensional photography or film shots. Because you must realise that in a book or on screen, it’s no longer reality but always an interpretation of it, a reflection. Somewhere at the start of secondary school, I received a book with the title Park Narodowy w Puszczy Białowieskiej (The National Park in Białowieża Forest) as a prize in a competition organised by the League for Nature Conservation. It was a collective work edited by Professor Janusz Faliński, with whom I had the honour of being on first-name terms years later, when I moved to Białowieża. This book was a wonderful and cherished prize for me. He and his wife, Professor Krystyna Falińska, wrote works that opened people’s eyes to the botany of the forest.

BW: I don’t remember exactly what I read as a child. Surely Miś (Teddy Bear) and Świerszczyk (Cricket) [popular magazines for, respectively, preschool and early school children that are still in publication – ed.]. We didn’t have a television, and my parents were busy, but my grandfather often told us stories – stories from his life, also about animals. Their plots always contained some kind of turning point – a bit of mystery, a bit of magic or a bit of horror, which kept us curious. I was the eldest of four siblings, and we constantly asked our grandfather, grandmother and father to tell us various stories.

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‘White Fang’ by Jack London, cover illustration by Janusz Grabiański, Iskry, 1967, photo: the artist’s family archive

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When it comes to books about animals, Jack London has left the greatest impression on me, forever and always. His books The Call of the Wild and White Fang were ones I often returned to. The same goes for James Oliver Curwood’s Kazan and Nomads of the North. They transported me to that world. I felt and understood the way those animals did – I was there, living their lives. This was how – something I’ll never forget – my empathy for wildlife was built. Later, there were thousands of other books I read, but without the same warmth. I consider these books the most important in my life.

JW: How valuable it is to listen to someone wise … London, of course. Grey Owl [Archibald Stansfeld Belaney] also wrote books that were eagerly snapped up, and they were absorbed alongside the films because there were quite a few screen adaptations of London and Curwood. But I’m convinced that the written word had a greater impact on the imagination. Sometimes these film adaptations irritated me because they spoiled the images that accompanied my reading. When we delve into someone’s words, we build up that imagined world in our own minds. Film makes it so concrete that it leaves viewers feeling unsatisfied, convinced that they’re dealing with something banal and obvious. My interpretation of London’s White Fang was free of explicit screen commentary and thus more mysterious. While reading the novel, the background of the action remains vague and slightly blurred – similar to vision, where the centre is clearer than its surroundings – yet we imagine that such a distant world exists. But what irritated me most in almost all the films was that humans were always shown as superior to animals, even though the main characters were meant to be wolves, dogs or bears. It reminded me more of the Wild West in the genre of Westerns. I always saw cracks and artificiality in how animals were directed on camera. Such mistakes never happened in the book. I always got goosebumps when the animal protagonist faced dramatic situations.

JRK: Such errors are hard to find in the auteur films and nature series produced by your company. In ‘Heartbeat of a Primaeval Forest’ and ‘Saga of an Ancient Forest’, animals remain the central characters. They even have dedicated episodes – whether it’s a European bison or an ant – which elevate them to superhero status.

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A European bison, photo from the album ‘Saga of an Ancient Forest: A Film Tale’ by Bożena & Jan Walencik, photo: © Jan Walencik / courtesy of the authors

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A photo from Bożena and Jan Walencik’s The Saga of the Ancient Forest, photo: © Jan Walencik, courtesy of the authors

JW: All in all, yes. Probably to compensate for my early dissatisfaction. Also, because the books I read in my youth undoubtedly stimulated and exercised my imagination. The roots undoubtedly went back to somewhere there – deep into my childhood.

BW: The books are unquestionably better than their film adaptations. On the other hand, I have yet to see an adaptation of the adventures of Tomek Wilmowski by Alfred Szklarski, which our grandsons, Jasio and Kostek, are now eagerly reading.

JW: The greatest thing about books is that they leave so much in our minds. When I once said that people who commune with nature become better, I also meant reading and, above all, experiencing. Adaptations of London and others, classified as nature-and-adventure films, often seem as artificial as Schwarzenegger pumped up by muscle-building drugs. In truth, there is no real nature in these screen productions, and the adventure lacks mystery. People are therefore more likely to return to books than films, and that says something. However, there are those who cannot be persuaded to read, even with a whip.

JRK: It’s a shame, because no matter how much you like Gregory Peck, the film ‘Moby Dick’, about the white sperm whale, cannot compare to Herman Melville’s original book.

JW: Because that wasn’t a film about a whale but about Gregory Peck. That’s who the audience went to see.

JRK: So, let’s move from cinema to literature.

BW: I remember that books, especially those from childhood, had an absolutely incredible effect on our imaginations. We built our own world based on them and lived in this world. But when the television era began and various cartoons appeared, such as Donald Duck and [the Russian show] Nu Pogodi (Well, Just You Wait!), watching them may have been fun and entertaining, but it left literally nothing in the minds of young viewers. A good book, on the other hand, always touches the mind or heart. You often go back to a good book and reflect on it. Sadly, films do not nurture children’s imaginations. They do not foster them. They do not give them the prospect of happiness. They do not inspire dreams.

Bożena and Jan Walencik’s The Saga of the Ancient Forest – Image Gallery

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JW: I’d extend this to Disney films like Lassie Come Home. I literally devoured Eric Knight’s book. Sadly, Disney anthropomorphised that collie to the extreme. In his version, it was a dog that thought, loved and acted ‘like a human being’ – the only thing missing was for it to write a letter or a book. That’s not the way to go. As for cartoons, when I watched them, I always had this wicked thought: ‘Don’t be taken in by this. It isn’t true. It’s a confabulation. It’s not real.’ But yes, there were some cute animations. Yogi Bear was lovely.

JRK: Let’s return, then, to the classics of literature. What should we recommend to young minds for its cognitive value?

JW: Henryk Sienkiewicz’s In Desert and Wilderness comes to mind. The story of Staś and Nel, yes, but for me it was the animals that mattered. Those elephants and lions captured my boyish imagination so strongly that I decided to make a film about them. In my hometown of Kazimierz, at 19 Lubelska Street, opposite St Anne’s Church, our house formed a kind of patio. On one side of it was the Hill of Three Crosses, and on the other side the house and other buildings created an ‘L’ shape. Back then, that courtyard was my whole world.

I’ve always had a knack for DIY because my dad was a decorator at a cooperative in Kazimierz, so I had access to his entire workshop. There wasn’t a single door frame in the house that I didn’t hammer dozens of nails into because I believed that was part of DIY decorum. In my small backyard, I knocked together some miniature props. I had an irresistible urge to miniaturise everything. Once, I redrew – not copied – but redrew all the nature pictures from a single-volume encyclopaedia. There were about 300 or 400 of them. But I was overcome by doubts – this wasn’t art, so I flushed them all down the toilet. I recently found two stray ones.

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W sercu prastarej puszczy – Bożena i Jan Walencikowie

BW: And indeed they’re beautiful.

JW: What else was I doing back then?… There was a photographer in Kazimierz, Henryk Dębski. He was in love with my widowed aunt, and to some extent, she reciprocated his feelings. When they were together, he gave me a Voigtländer, a 6 x 9 cm bellows camera. It was broken, but the shutter worked, and the bellows stretched. It had an angled viewing lens with a magnifying glass. For a child not yet seven years old, it was an extraordinary gift. I decided then, in my imagination, of course, to film In Desert and Wilderness with it. I placed figurines of giraffes, elephants and lions in a thicket of ribwort or some kind of wheatgrass between the stone boulders in the yard. I watched the whole thing through the viewfinder, but the scriptwriter, of course, was Mr Sienkiewicz. ‘I knew’ how to direct because I had watched film crews at work, for example, during the shooting of Wyspa Złoczyńców (The Island of Villains) with Jan Machulski and Ryszard Pietruski. Kazimierz was the first and most important place in my aesthetic development.

JRK: Which other writers on nature are worth mentioning?

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Young ravens, photo from album ‘Saga of an Ancient Forest: A Film Tale’ by Bożena & Jan Walencik, photo: © Jan Walencik / courtesy of the authors

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JW: Someone who comes to mind is Julian Ejsmond, a pre-war senior civil servant and the vice-president of the League for Nature Conservation. He was a highly skilled writer. He published, amongst other things, Żywoty Drzew (The Lives of Trees). It contains a story about a stunted birch tree knocked down by the wind, and atmospheric stories about ravens taking revenge on an evil-hearted villager who took young birds from their nests. Ejsmond’s stories later came in handy in Saga of an Ancient Forest. They helped create the atmosphere. I borrowed one motif from him, which Krzysztof Gosztyła interpreted in his film about the lynx. When the old male returned to our heroine, the female lynx, during the mating season, I symbolically called this moment ‘wild animal happiness’ [dzika zwierzęca szczęśliwość]. These are Julian Ejsmond’s exact words.

JRK: Which books best depict Białowieża Forest?

BW: Among them is certainly Simona Kossak’s books. In recent years, even her short radio stories, which quickly won over listeners across Poland, have come out in print.

JW: It’s also worth mentioning Professor Janusz Faliński and the album Zielone Grądy i Czarne Bory Białowieży (The Green Oak-and-Hornbeam and Black Evergreen Forests of Białowieża), created [in 1977] in collaboration with Janusz Hereźniak, a biology professor from Łódź, as well as a fine-art photographer and member of ZPAF (Association of Polish Art Photographers). Back then, in the mid-1970s, he took stunning black-and-white photographs. The book left a profound impression on me. It showcased and described Białowieża Forest from the inside out, with reliable commentary that was almost scientific yet accessible to everyone. The author of the photographs was not particularly fascinated by animals, but the landscapes were truly remarkable for that period.

JRK: In the films and series about Białowieża Forest that you’ve created, hunting and poaching are depicted solely as brutal intrusions into pristine nature, with the culprits meeting grim ends. Would you say that was accurate?

BW: Absolutely.

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Bisons in the Mist: The Couple Who Live & Breathe the Białowieża Forest – Video

JW: From the very beginning of creating Saga of an Ancient Forest, we held a rather pessimistic but truthful assumption that in each episode the encounter between our animal hero and a human would end badly or tragically for the former. This reflects reality, especially when we place ourselves in the role of an animal. There is no cinematic sugarcoating on our part. We believe that portrayal is simply honest. Meanwhile, in films featuring elements of nature, there is a peculiar tendency to focus solely on human affairs because, according to the ‘human’ screenwriter, this is the material that directly influences the viewer and, colloquially speaking, turns them on. It’s an absolute rarity for feature films with elements of wildlife to adopt a proper approach to nature and to give the shooting style, rather than a naïve, not to say embarrassing, manner.

BW: Because every film, even and especially feature films, should show deep respect for Mother Nature, with whom humans should live in complete symbiosis instead of ruthlessly exploiting her.

_{Interview conducted in Polish, September 2020, translated into English by Agnieszka Mistur, Nov 2025}

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