Filip Bajon

Film director, script writer, prose writer. Born on the 25th of August 1947 in Poznań.

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Filip Bajon

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Filip Bajon obtained a degree in law in 1970. Before submitting his thesis, he started course in directing at the National Film, Television and Theatre School (PWSFTviT) in Łódź. In 1971 he published the novel Białe niedźwiedzie nie lubią słonecznej pogody (editor's translation: Polar Bears do not like sunny weather). Subsequent publications include the short stories Proszę ze mną na górę (Come Upstairs with me, 1979), and novels Serial pod tytułem (A Series Entitled) and Podsłuch (Taped, 1994). He completed the directing course in 1974. His graduation project was Sadze (Soot) from 1973, a story of a hero forced to suppress a workers protest in December 1970 but failed.

He took his first career steps after leaving film school at the Tor Film Studio, initially making short and medium-length documentaries and feature films. He sporadically directed documentaries as well as television theatre productions and stage plays. He headed the now-defunct Dom Film Studio for a few years.

Filip Bajon's first full-length film was Aria dla atlety (Aria for an Athlete). The director's style was surprisingly different and fresh compared to the slightly journalistic trend of the cinema of moral anxiety that dominated in the Polish cinema at the time. Some critics tried to present Bajon's work as an opposite creative trend. In an interview granted to M. Kornatowska, the director himself admitted that he saw a conflict in cinema between pragmatic immediacy and aesthetics. He said, "In cinema I am fascinated with creating the world from scratch, inventing it, in other words - a demiurgic function. All this, of course, can be brought under the notion of creativity". The formal means used in Aria for an Athlete were characterised expressively by cinematographer Jerzy Zieliński, who said that his task during the making of the film was to visually enrich each scene from the script. The instructions he followed could be summarised in the words extreme in every scene. The director also used this expression in a long interview (Szczun, W. Braniecki, 1998), saying he believed "a film has to be blown up, it has to show a world that never existed", and to achieve this "you have to show extreme situations". These words can be treated as his artistic credo.

Bajon even created a world that never existed in biographical pictures. A. Kołodyński wrote in 1980 that in the case of Bajon's films, a biography is only "the starting point for the vivid imagination", noticing a resemblance to the style of Russell and Fellini. In Fellini's case, this even involved quotes from his films, testifying to a fascination with the Italian filmmaker's work. Others (Lewandowski, Kałużynski and Gorzański) also noticed this, and the label "the Fellini from Poznań" stuck to Bajon, though some used it with tongue in cheek.

Building his film shots, Bajon also turned to visual arts (e.g. Aria for an Athlete features shots stylised to look like Toulouse-Lautrec's paintings and Beardsley's drawings). Kolodynski found that Bajon's film language contained "youthful intoxication with the art of the cinema spectacle, which sponges off painting, theatre and the reality of other people's lives, but uses this to build a world we yearn for".

Wizja lokalna 1901 (Inspection of the Crime Scene 1901) marked the start of a new perception of the director's work. The critics appreciated the film's visual value, but another important element was the treatment of a patriotic theme with cool rationalism, showing the school strikes against the Germanisation of Polish children in a way that was devoid of emotion. This did not preclude image creativity, and the combination of these two seemingly contradictory styles of speaking was a great value of the film. This picture and subsequent ones provided a basis for defining the topics on which the director focused. J. Lewandowski wrote, "Bajon is not interested in the mechanisms or tragedies of history, but in unique breakthrough moments that he presents as unusual visions of the end of the world", pointing out that in almost every film, and in his prose as well, Bajon is interested in the moment when "one era gives way to another", creating a "model situation of disintegration in which one can sense a mood of decadence".

It is hard not to agree with this, as in a way, the end of a stable world is portrayed in Aria for an Athlete, Inspection of the Crime Scene 1901, Limuzyna Daimler-Benz (The Consul), but also - now seen in a different context - an earlier film mentioned by the critic, Zielona Ziemia (Green Land), set at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The director also touched on the theme of breakthrough moments in later films, to mention Magnat (The Magnate) and Lepiej być piekną i bogatą (It is Better to be Beautiful and Rich), and in a sense also in Poznań 56 and Przedwiośnie (The Spring to Come).

Filip Bajon has directed more modest films, such as Wahadelko (Shilly-Shally), Sauna, and Engagement, in which he used means more akin to television theatre. There is no question, though, that each time the ascetic quality of these pictures was the result of economic or political necessity.

For many years the film language of the director of Aria for an Athlete did not change much; his youthful intoxication with film art did not wane, not even in later years. Bajon likes to take on historical themes but, to use the words of Lewandowski from the text quoted earlier, he prefers to remain a creationist than a philosopher of history. His most recent films, however, met with greater resistance from critics and viewers alike, not because they were less interestingly directed, but because they touched on issues which audiences disagreed with, and the discrepancy between the director's vision and what the average Pole expected to see, for instance in an adaptation of The Spring to come, was too great.

Similarly, in the case of Poznań 56 the important thing for most viewers was the sense of the displayed events, whereas Filip Bajon's cinema places the sense and logic of the story in the background, focusing on individual scenes instead. This is sometimes the strength of his original work, but also, as the failures have shown, its drawback. Undoubtedly the director is aware of this. In the interview granted to W. Braniecki he says, "What irritates me the most is a certain obligation towards the story I have to tell. On the other hand, what I like most about each of my films is when I experience that genuine joy from making a brilliant shot".

In Bajon's feature film Fundacja (Foundation, 2006), despite the fact that the political breakthrough in Poland took place in 1989 and a considerable amount of time has elapsed, you can almost sense an analysis of the model situation, when one era gives way to another. Once again this is evident in Bajon's film Better to be Pretty and Rich. When one era gives way to another, reads as: when one political system gives way to the next, experiencing these changes may give rise to inner demons. There is no lack of ghosts or vampires, such as the clever characters in Bajon's Foundation who cynically prey on the misfortunes of others.

In Filip Bajon's screen adaptation of Śluby panieńskie (Maiden Vows, 2010) written by Aleksander Fredro, surprisingly the director is looking for what he has repeatedly sought, taking on a variety of themes in his films.

In an interview the director told Gazeta Wyborcza,

For me, in Fredro's pieces there is something else, a goodbye to the old world, an indigent world. There is a new era at brink, the capitalist era. While writing the script to Śluby panieńskie (Maiden Vows) I surrounded myself with diaries from that era. It turned out, that what was contemporary in the past is not very different from the present, except for habits, which are slightly different. Interestingly enough, in these memoirs, there is no mention of any uprising. If Poland had not recently lost its independence and if in five years the November Uprising would not break out. I decided on this film precisely because I had not seen a film about emigration of the Polish nobility in 1825. This adaptation has gone towards a mural style. I was enchanted once by a Zeffirelli film The Taming of the Shrew with Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, a Renaissance fresco. Here I found similar material.

The film version of Fredro's play is set in the XIX century, but it has been enriched by modern elements such as rock music, a truck or cellphones owned by most of the protagonists. The film received mixed reviews (Łukasz Muszyński wrote for Filmweb that it is "old-fashioned, both emotionally and comically, and not a sensual social satire"), but the idea itself has been praised as well as costumes and set design - both nominated for the Polish Film Awards Orły.

The film that followed - Damaged (2015) - was also inspired by a XIX-century drama - Gabriela Zapolska's The Morality of Mrs Dulska. It is not a classic adaptation though, but a variation on the theme, in which the granddaughter of Aniela Dulska, a director planning to make a film about her family, discovers her mother's and grandmother's secrets. Three dames of Polish cinema play the main roles - Krystyna Janda, Katarzyna Figura and Maja Ostaszewska.

Damaged is a universal, timeless story, which makes the modern viewer realize, that we don't only live in a here and now, but also a hundred years ago, because everything that happened then affects us, affects our story. The human being is more connected to the past than he think - said Filip Bajon about the film.

In 2018 the historical drama The Butler premiered at the 43rd Gdynia Film Festival. The film is set between 1901 and 1945 in Kashubia, a region that is not often portrayed in Polish cinema. For this reason, its premiere was very strongly anticipated. However, the audience had to have a lot of patience, as its production was delayed due to financial difficulties.

The Butler tells the story of Mateusz Kroll (Sebastian Fabijański), a Kashubian boy who is adopted by the wealthy aristocratic Prussian von Krauss family (with Adam Woronowicz as the count and Anna Radwan as the countess) after his mother’s death. In narrating the history of the family and their neighbours, Bajon also relates the story of pre-World War II Kashubia. As the director said in an interview for Gazeta Wyborcza, all the stories he told in the film were based on real events. The script was co-written by Mirosław Piepka, the son of Kashubian writer Jan Piepka.

The film was highly appreciated at the Gdynia Film Festival, winning the Silver Lion and three awards: for best makeup and hairstyling (Mira Wojtczak, Ewa Drobiec), best leading male actor (Adam Woronowicz), and best original score (Antoni Komasa-Łazarkiewicz).

Orginally written in Polish by Ewa Nawoj, July 2003; last update: August 2019