The Art of Seeing: Richard Peña on Andrzej Wajda’s Cinematic Eye

richard_pena-andrzej_wajda_Gary-Hershor_forum.jpg, default, A portrait of Richard Peña, photo: private archive; Andrzej Wajda with the Oscar statuette, an award for lifetime achievement, 2000, Los Angeles, phot

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What does it mean to see the world through the lens of a master? As the world marks the centenary of Andrzej Wajda’s birth, renowned scholar Richard Peña argues that the director didn’t just document history – he taught us how to look at it.

In the spring of 2026, within the walls of the Andrzej Wajda Film Centre in Warsaw, a specific kind of magic was being dissected. Richard Peña – the man who shaped the New York Film Festival for a quarter-century and now guides students at Columbia University – was revisiting a set of old notes. They weren’t notes on scripts or plot points, but on Edward Hopper paintings and the ‘disquieting’ geometry of a frame.

Through his decades as a programmer and educator, Peña has championed Polish cinema as a ‘national dialogue’ that resonates far beyond its borders. In this conversation, he reflects on his long friendship with Wajda, the danger of a modern cinema that forgets how to think in images, and why, 100 years after his birth, Wajda’s ‘visual intelligence’ remains the gold standard for the silver screen.

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Portrait of Zbigniew Cybulski, photo: Filmoteka Narodowa – Instytut Audiowizualny/fototeka.fn.org.pl

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Portrait of Zbigniew Cybulski, Source: Filmoteka Narodowa/www.fototeka.fn.org.pl

Agnes Dudek: What first drew you to the cinema of Andrzej Wajda, and what in his work convinced you that it deserved sustained attention and deeper exploration?

Richard Peña: I’m pretty sure that the first Wajda film I saw was Ashes and Diamonds, and I was immediately taken with it. The figure of Zbigniew Cybulski made a big impact on me. I had grown up believing that everything from Eastern Europe was simply propaganda for the regimes there, but this film clearly couldn’t be easily fit into that category. In high school, a friend and I ran the ‘Foreign Film Series’, and one of the first films we selected was Kanał, based on our admiration for Ashes and Diamonds. After that, I would do my best to keep up with all of Wajda’s films that were distributed in the US.

In 1974-75, I took a year off from university and travelled through Latin America. In Brazil, I met many people who were part of the Cinema Novo movement that had been so dynamic in the 1960s. In conversation, almost all of them mentioned their great admiration for Polish cinema in general. When I asked one of them to explain this, he told me, ‘What we admire is that Polish cinema is really important for Poland. It’s a big part of a national dialogue about that country. That’s what we in Brazil would like to achieve – the sense of being an essential part of culture.’

AD: As someone who has programmed and introduced world cinema for decades, where do you place Wajda among the great filmmakers of the 20th century?

RP: I’m not much for ratings. Suffice it to say that, to my mind, Andrzej Wajda is one of the greatest filmmakers in film history – without a doubt.

AD: In your view, what set Wajda apart – not only from other Polish filmmakers, but from other major directors of his generation?

RP: Every time I see a Wajda film – I just had a chance to see the beautifully restored version of Korczak – I am just struck by the sheer love of cinema that his works exude. The care, the invention, the respect for the medium and for the audience. Whether or not this sets him apart from other filmmakers is more complex, but it’s that sense of fully engaging the medium that makes his films so thrilling, even when they are about terribly tragic subjects.

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Presenters (left), Richard Peña (right) 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: During your speech at the conference, you recalled a masterclass Andrzej Wajda gave at Columbia University, where he began by analysing paintings by Edward Hopper rather than discussing film directly. How did Wajda’s use of painting in that masterclass illuminate his understanding of cinema as a way of seeing?

RP: There has been a dialogue between cinema and painting since the creation of the medium: is it that much of a leap from Claude Monet’s 'Gare Saint-Lazare' series to the Lumières’ Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat? There were also films that clearly drew on aesthetic principles earlier established in the visual arts: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (expressionism), Un Chien Andalou (surrealism), The Man with the Movie Camera (constructivism). What I believe Wajda was showing is how visual artists inscribe the very act of looking into their works, so it was less about films that evoked painting than about elucidating the shared concerns of painters and filmmakers.

AD: You mentioned that you kept detailed notes from Wajda’s masterclass for many years. When you revisited them while preparing for your talk in Warsaw, what insight struck you most strongly?

RP: I wish my notes had been much more detailed! He would begin with general comments about the paintings, and then gradually become more and more detailed, before going back to more general comments about painting and cinema.

AD: Columbia’s film programme is renowned for its emphasis on screenwriting, yet Wajda seemed to focus first on the image. Do you think he felt that modern cinema sometimes privileges narrative too heavily over visual thinking?

RP: A friend of mine, who recently retired after teaching film for over fifty years, told me that when he began teaching, all his students had Super-8 cameras in the top drawers of their dressers. But in the past twenty years, all his students have had screenplays in those same drawers. I think that says it all.

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Zbigniew Cybulski in 'Ashes And Diamonds' (1958) directed by Andrzej Wajda, photo: Polfilm / East News

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Zbigniew Cybulski in Ashes And Diamonds (1958) directed by Andrzej Wajda, photo: Polfilm / East News

AD: You also discussed framing devices – windows, doorways, shafts of light – as a way of shaping how we see an image. Are there particular examples in Wajda’s films where framing becomes especially expressive?

RP: So many. Just think of his use of framing in Ashes and Diamonds, in which the framing works with deep focus to create deeply ambiguous images.

AD: Staying with ‘Ashes and Diamonds’, Wajda uses striking visual devices – deep focus, carefully composed frames, and occasional surreal touches. How do these visual choices contribute to the film’s emotional and political resonance?

RP: Ashes and Diamonds is a film about ‘ambiguity’, a quality in art that was the antithesis of the socialist realism that had so dominated Polish cinema after the War. All of these factors you mention add to this.

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'Morning Sun' by Edward Hopper, 1952, photo: Columbus / Museum of Art

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AD: You described Hopper’s images as ‘disquieting’ – calm on the surface yet troubled beneath. Which film by Andrzej Wajda do you think most clearly captures that kind of psychological tension? And why?

RP: Just off the top of my head – and I haven’t seen it in a while – would be Holy Week, one of Wajda’s meditations on the complexity of Polish-Jewish relations. It’s a film in which the main characters are trying to do something good, and things just get worse.

AD: How do you understand Wajda’s ability to engage in a ‘national dialogue’ while maintaining a deeply personal perspective?

RP: I see Wajda as an artist engaged in a kind of national dialogue about Polish history and society. Again, take Ashes and Diamonds, and his treatment of Szczuka. Although Wajda clearly would not agree with his politics nor his vision for Poland, there’s a respect for him – he’s sincere, and his voice should have a place.

AD: Films such as ‘Man of Marble’ openly question official narratives and political myths. How courageous was that gesture in the context in which the film was made?

RP: Wajda had been questioning official narratives since at least Kanał. In Man of Marble, he challenges what might be called the official narrative of Polish economic development, particularly in its suppression of the memory of those who were its victims. More than 30 years after the establishment of the communist state, it was time for a re-assessment.

AD: Wajda often used powerful visual symbols to evoke the complexities of Polish history. How did he translate such specifically Polish experiences into a cinematic language that resonated with international audiences, and what allowed his films to travel so powerfully across cultures?

RP: Naturally, there are subtleties and themes that as a non-Pole I simply don’t understand, but at the core of all great art are connections that to my mind go beyond cultural specificity to a realm of feeling that is truly universal.

AD: You had the opportunity to meet Andrzej Wajda many times over the years. What stood out to you most about him as a person, and what was he like both as a man and as a director?

RP: The first time I met Mr Wajda was in 1996, when I co-organised a 50-film historical retrospective of Polish cinema at Lincoln Center. He agreed to come to New York, introduce some of his films and participate in panel discussions. I think he realised that I was a little star-struck, and he did all he could to put me at ease. The two words that leap to mind when I think of him are generosity and commitment.

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A still from 'The Promised Land' directed by Andrzej Wajda, 1974, photo: Polfilm/East News

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AD: For younger audiences discovering Wajda today, which of his films would you consider the most essential starting point?

RP: I guess one should start with three crucial watersheds in his work: Ashes and Diamonds, Man of Marble and Katyń. The next level, for me, would be Everything for Sale, Landscape After Battle and The Promised Land. And finally, to discover the many ‘moods’ of Wajda, The Maids of Wilko, Without Anaesthesia and Pan Tadeusz.

AD: If you had to describe the essence of Wajda’s cinema in a single idea – not historically or politically, but visually – what would define his way of seeing the world?

RP: A kind of variation on what I wrote earlier: critical, yet always generous.

AD: Throughout our conversation, you’ve touched on how Wajda’s work served as a ‘national dialogue’ and a universal language. You’ve put that theory into practice yourself through your collaborations with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. How did Wajda’s legacy of social justice influence the film programmes you helped organise with them for international audiences?

RP: Soon after I retired from Lincoln Center, my friend Paweł Potoroczyn, who had been such a terrific director of the Polish Cultural Institute in New York, asked if I would like to work with him at the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, organising brief film programmes dealing with human rights, social justice and ‘people power’. Poland, as he explained to me, saw part of its foreign policy as spreading and solidifying democratic ideals in the newly established democracies of the former Soviet bloc.

To that end, we travelled to Armenia, Georgia and Moldova, showing international films that depicted people standing up against unjust legal systems or working for social change through electoral reform. It was a wonderful programme, though the institute eventually decided to move in a different direction.

About Richard Peña

Richard Peña is a Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University and one of the world’s most respected film scholars and curators. For twenty-five years (1988–2012), he served as the Program Director of the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center, where he was instrumental in introducing international masters to American audiences. A long-time champion of Polish cinema, Peña has organised numerous retrospectives and collaborated with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute on global film initiatives focused on social justice and democratic ideals.

Language English