Born in 1939 in Aleksandrów Kujawski.Grzegorz Królikiewcz, today perceived chiefly as a film and television creator never abandoned making documentaries. He was one of the most celebrated documentary film-makers of his generation, which at the festival in Cracow in 1971 rebelled not only against the style of their older friend’s films but also against the social and political reality of communist Poland. Krzysztof Kieślowski, Tomasz Zygadło, Wojciech Wiszniewski or Paweł Kędzierski were leading figures of that generation. One of those who added an aesthetic aspect to the rebellion (alongside Wiszniewski) was Królikiewicz.
In 1962 he graduated from the Law Department of the University of Łódź and in 1967 from the Directing Department of the film school in Łódź. He received his diploma in 1970. He collaborated with television since 1971. In 1976-78 he directed the television Editorial Office of Facts. In the years 1981-83 he was artistic director of the Film Group Annex. Since 1981 he is an academic worker at the PWSFTviT film school in Łódź. He also lectured at the Department of Film Theory of the University of Łódź, at the Department of Radio and Television of the Silesian University and at the Melchior Wańkowicz Higher School of Journalism in Warsaw. From 2003 until 2005 he was the director of the New Theatre in Łódź.
Since 1969 he realized televised theatre performances of the Fact Theatre and documentaries. As a creator of feature movies he debuted in 1972 with the celebrated movie Through and Through. He is the author of dozens of documentaries, television theatre spectacles and eight feature movies. He is also the author of many books on the theory of cinema and analyses of film masterpieces published in the series Golden Series [publisher: Film Studio “N”]. He realizes theatrical plays.
Grzegorz Królikiewicz received many awards for his television and film work: Golden Lions at the Polish Film Festival in Gdańsk, awards at festivals in Mannheim and Carlsbad amongst others. He also received several Golden Screen awards granted by the weekly Ekran: in 1972 for a cycle of educational television spectacles Facts State, a few years later for the realization of the television spectacle Crude, in 1976 for the television show Third of May and in 1979 for the spectacles of the Fact Theatre. In 1998 he received the Honorary Prize at the Prowincjonalia Film Festival in Słupca near Konin for the entirety of his film work.
It is said that after Grzegorz Królikiewicz’s documentary Don’t Cry (1972) won the Brown Lajkonik prize at the National Short Film Competition in Cracow in 1972, one of the English critics stated that, Polish cinematography has gained its Bresson (Elżbieta Smoleń-Wasileska, “Film” 29/1972). By then the young director had already made approximately ten documentary realizations and a few television ones. At the time he was also working on his feature debut Through and Through (1972), which was to confirm the accuracy of the unknown critic’s words. Zbigniew Pitera wrote about Robert Bresson in the Lexicon of Film Directors published in 1978: he rigorously leads film expression towards asceticism, often abandoning traditional action and dialogue for the sake of the image. He shows the character’s experiences through a meticulous observation of their faces, gestures and details from their surroundings. He doesn’t trust traditional acting based on ‘experiencing the part’ and hires amateurs. He can even be apocalyptic in his own way, considering he transforms epopees into liturgy – [J.S.].
Many of these remarks can also relate to Królikiewicz’s movies, some of them characterize his entire body of work. Grzegorz Królikiewicz is a man that had a clear vision of how to make films and what they should be about from the beginning of his career. He may have had that vision even earlier, because his theoretical text Film Space outside the Frame, although published in 1972 (Kino 11/1972), was already written in 1968 – a year before he debuted with his documentary Men. He strives to achieve the goals he set in his youth with a remarkable consistency. Even if it involves being criticized, rejected by the public or misunderstood by specialists. In communist times, his artistic stance provoked reluctant reactions of decision makers, which must have been hard to ignore for him. The abovementioned movie Don’t Cry had to lie for a few years on a shelf, such was the decision of the censorship office. It was only distributed, or as it was called released in the times of the so-called Solidarity Carnival in 1981. The debutant movie Men had less luck and lay on a shelf until 1989, when the communist state of labourers, peasants and working intelligentsia called the Polish People’s Republic, which didn’t appreciate the way it was portrayed in the film, collapsed.
In an interview published in the weekly Film (32/1971), asked about the reasons for which he rejects the existing standards and rules of Polish cinema, he said:
My motives aren’t political or social. I find the specific type of culture that transpires through Polish movies irritating. It’s a culture that aspires to a petty stabilization; it propagates a vision of mediocre life.
He called this sociological art, extremely veristic, considering the films’ conclusions were almost truisms (elsewhere he spoke of a small realism, the abuse of stereotypes and schematism). He knew that there was an opposite side of this approach and he called it the cult of peculiarities. In his opinion it used the same film language as sociological art but instead of describing the average, it portrayed only the dregs of society.
Grzegorz Królikiewicz proposed to… think:
It is said that art should convey the truth about man. Maybe one ought to make sure that this truth is based on certain thoughts. Contemporary science – anthropology, ethnography, theory of culture – has reached significant achievements in this field: it describes the structures, which determine human conduct, activity, thought, the human way of feeling and so forth.
He advised filmmakers to attempt to reach these structures, giving an example of a few of his documentary realizations such as the Boss (I think that in this movie I managed to show a certain regularity of psychological reactions), We Remember Lenin (I tried to portray certain objective laws of teaching or in a broader sense – of conveying information) or the Letter from a Murderer (It’s an attempt at characterizing a war criminal using his victims’ statements).
Before Królikiewicz set about realizing Through and Through (in those days still called The Malisz Case) he said:
I’d like to test a certain way of staging, which for narrative purposes uses the space outside of the frame (Film 45/1971).
In this sentence he referred to his article Film Space outside the Frame, in which, as noticed by the critics, one can find a description of the vast majority of formal techniques used in his movies. Most of them are a result of the concepts of staging the director adopted. He describes one of them as peremptory (it leads towards – as written by Królikiewicz – obviousness, a petty stabilization, small realism, the lack of mystery and the lack of space to think). The other is democratic. It incorporates a relativity of accents, it leaves room for interpretation, forces to think, allows the viewer to come to his own conclusions (Grzegorz Królikiewicz, Kino 11/1972).
The director consistently favours this kind of dialogue with the viewer in all of his movies. He wrote in the same text: film space is often used to thicken the plot, when it should be used to add more meaning. He offers the viewer a specific obstacle course, which consist of understatements, false or strange movements of the camera accompanied by sounds (Królikiewicz once mentioned something about the camera swinging), scenes devoid of dialogue, surprises, provocations, out of focus frames, in which unimportant, random details appear in the foreground and cover the actions of the characters, which take place in the far background. In another article (Against the Mystery for the Poor, Kino 1/1979) he wrote that a movie is a disintegration and at the same time a re-integration. He compared this to the positive disintegration of the personality, making a reference to the theory of disintegration created by the psychiatrist Kazimierz Dąbrowski, which was popular in the seventies. Królikiewicz persuades the viewer to actively perceive his works. In his opinion only intellectual cinema, which creates ideas and enables the viewer to participate in that process, doesn’t grow old. The director expressed this belief in another issue of Kino from 1979 (Kino 5/1979).
In Krolikiewicz’s feature debut we find themes and a type of character that the director will return to in other movies. The protagonist wants to achieve success, although his personal predispositions or the social reality don’t enable him to do so. He is a man that pursues social advancement or is the victim of it, a man, who has to emphasize his worth and even his existence. If there are no other options he does so by committing crimes. Real crimes, as in the case of the Malisz couple (Through and Through), or imaginary (?), as in the movie Killing of an Aunt from 1984, which is based on the story by Andrzej Bursa. In reality, which according to the director is falling apart, in the swirl of contradictory values, in motion, in the moral and cultural crisis, the protagonist, who unlike Brechtian characters, embraces in a Manichean way evil rather than good, has to transgress his dimension. This doesn’t mean, considering the unfavourable circumstances, that he will eventually embrace good, although sometimes these circumstances, as in Through and Through or in the Killing of an Aunt or in Fort 13, are main limitations of the human nature. (It is after all a movie about the untamed metaphysical hunger – said the director in a conversation with Stanisław Janicki, Kino 4/1973). In the text Searching for the Myth (Film, 44/1972) he gave examples of characters from American movies: in westerns, the cowboy, who essentially is a herder, gains the status of a magnificent knight, he resembles Roland, in noir films the characters have black souls and crime elevates them to the level of ultimate issues. The text deals with myths, allegories and legends, just as the novel Dancing Falcon by Julian Kawalec, which became the basis of its television realization (Crude, 1974) and the movie Dancing Falcon (1977).
The second feature movie Perpetual Claims (1974) is similar.
The whole subject matter of ‘Perpetual Claims’ consists of the search for an average, dull biography of universal motives of human existence – said Grzegorz Królikiewicz in a conversation with Andrzej Markowski (Kino 7/1975). Basically my idea can be summarized in one sentence: it is a search for the principle of responsibility which lies in ourselves, not in institutions administering punishment or granting awards; it is therefore a search for autonomy or enslavement, which occurs in the boundaries we ourselves determine.
What he said about his debut was similar to what he said about the second movie, which he called a history of loosing personal dignity and searching for it. There were certain things about the movie that the director couldn’t speak about openly in interviews because of censorship. The search is conducted by meek, mediocre and plebeian characters, which resemble those extracted by communist Poland from cultural, social and political non-existence. The events take place in the clumsy, sackcloth, mediocre and nonspecific reality of communist Poland.
The author’s consistency, although remarkable, wasn’t understood and appreciated by all of the viewers. A few of his next films (especially The Jewel of the Free Conscience and Fort 13, but sometimes also the Dancing Falcon) were perceived as manneristic , boring and unclear and were accused of repeating motifs from the first movies, especially from Through and Through.
It wasn’t until 1993, when the movie Pakosiński’s Case was released, that the director once again reminded, that he is in top form and is able to draw practical conclusions from his theoretical assumptions. This psychodrama, as it was justly called also by the director himself, had its beginning in the very distant past. Franciszek Trzeciak, the actor playing the main role in Through and Through spoke about this. It turns out that in the key courtroom scene of this movie, he answered (as Malisz) questions, which weren’t asked by the judge or the prosecutor, who aren’t present in the movie. He answered questions asked by the director. The replies weren’t written beforehand, they were fully improvised and the director’s questions were later cut out during editing (interview by Bożena Janicka, Film 42/1972).
Królikiewicz’s artistic path, despite certain hesitations and doubts is consistent. Contrary to appearances there are no significant differences considering means of expression between the movies Through and Through, Perpetual Claims and Dancing Falcon. They have a homogeneous style in common – wrote Janusz Skwara (Kino 1/1978). Constantly changing the camera’s work, discarding classic dramaturgy and realistic sound recordings, Królikiewicz relentlessly aims to reach the most complicated inner states of his characters through images and the ‘space outside the frame’.
The protagonist of Pekosiński’s Case is a person-nobody, without a name, he doesn’t know his parents or his place of birth. Like other characters from Królikiewicz’s movies, he fights for his dignity, only this time, unlike in the earlier films, he has a chance to succeed.
The effects the director achieves in feature films are similar to those achieved by him in documentaries. Let’s bring forth as an example the celebrated documentary Across the Body (1999). It tells the story of a lawsuit filed after many years by members of an independent scout movement, who were once teenagers, against their torturers from the communist special police. The movie presents three sides of the story; the point of view of the judge leading the trial is also included. The film’s form, conveys not only obvious meanings (the torturers don’t feel guilty, the judge remains indifferent to the victim’s sufferings) but also a deeper truth: the close-ups of old people, their moves, the meticulously registered reactions of both the victims and the accused, illustrate the problem of getting old, the passing of time, which makes reaching a fair verdict impossible. Or one of the celebrated movies from recent years (Later They Called Him a Bandit, 2002), which tells the story of Józef Karaś alias Fire. He was a partisan, bandit (?), hero and up to today is regarded as a controversial figure, loved by some, hated by others. Not only people speak in this movie. Also the expressive clouds, which scurry with great speed across the sky, have a voice of their own. The people speak (they sing ballads about the hero), but also the mountains talk (they carry those ballads to the world) and this constitutes an equiponderant way of relating.
The cycle of four documents showing Lech Wałęsa’s presidential campaign is a specific masterpiece of such a polyphonic dialogue (Man from the Well, New Beginning, Free Election, Listen to the People, 1991). The four movies are in dialogue with each other, instead of the dialogue taking place in each movie separately (this was noticed by Anna Madej, Kino 12/1992).
At first Grzegorz Królikiewicz’s television and television theatre spectacles seem dissimilar to his films (apart from The Jewel of the Free Conscience from 1981). The form, which in the movies is characterized by an economy and is truly retail, in the television spectacles is exquisite and splendourous. The author doesn’t limit himself, he uses many available means and techniques, plots, documents, archival materials, animations (it’s worth noting that he also used animation in the Killing of an Aunt - one of his feature movies). Most of Królikiewicz’s television realizations were devoted to world history and Polish history. Contrary to the feature films, where he registered, mapped and sometimes even provoked the disintegration and chaos of the surrounding reality and culture, the television shows were created using a process directed in the opposite direction. Tomasz Jopkiewicz wrote (Kino 7-8/2006) that the artist gets strongly involved with public affairs, because he is horrified by what he thinks about the human nature [Manicheanism - J.S.]. Królikiewicz himself once said that he animates the past to integrate the nation and to present it with a rooting in history and culture. Even for the price of reinterpretation, adding meanings and for the sake of the Sienkiewiczian “raising of spirits (Kino 6/1978).
He is the restless and disturbing spirit of Polish cinema, an artist on a lonely search for the one and only ‘true’ path for both the soul and art – wrote Maria Kornatowska about Królikiewicz (Film, 41/1986).
After the premiere of Pekosiński’s Case Andrzej Wajda sent a letter to Tadeusz Lubelski, an editor at the monthly Kino. In it he wrote:
After seeing yesterday’s movie I was searching for an answer as to why Królikiewicz isn’t Greenaway, even though his imagination is just as vivid and his faith in movies created by images may even be stronger?. He replied: The answer is: because Grzegorz believes in a social and political reality, in a real existence of the world of nature, whereas the Englishman sees only culture and quotes (…).
Wajda also wrote that people want cinema, not a movie. They want an illusion, and such an illusion is created by references to works that have been read or seen earlier. Films of this kind isolate the viewer from the ugly world, providing him with – this my interpretation of the director’s letter – peace and quiet. The viewer cannot get such peace from Królikiewicz.
Królikiewcz demands that the viewer participates in what he’s watching, he demands answers. However today the viewers avoid such requests as one would avoid a bothersome fly.
It’s hard to remain indifferent to Grzegorz Królikiewicz’s proposals – wrote Seweryn Kuśmierczyk (Kwartalnik Filmowy 29-30/2000).
The most important of Królikiewicz's performances directed for televison, the Polish Television Theatre plays and TV films include: Cztery wielkie wyprawy do Indii / Four Great Journeys to India basen on Chrisopher Columbus' diaries (1971), Paris Commune written together with Krzysztof Wojciechowski and based on Oliver Prospero Lissagaray's diaries (1971), Yuri Olesha's Envy written together with Franciszek Trzeciak (1972), Tajna historia Mongołów / The Secret History of Mongols (1973), Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Faust (1976), Jerzy Mikke's and Jerzy Łojek's 3 maja / The Third of May (1976) appreciated at many festivals, Kronika Polska Galla Anonima cz. I i II /The Chronicle of Poland by Gall the Anonymous part I and II (1977), Idea i miecz / The Idea and the Sword (1978), Powrót / The Return based on Hilda von Danvitz's diary (1978), Michel Montaigne's Essays (1997), Juliusz Słowacki's Anhelli (1999), and Anatomia sumień / The Anatomy of Consciences written together with Krystyna Wilczkowska (2000).
Cinema without anesthesia – that is how Tomasz Jopkiewicz described Królikiewicz’s work after watching Across the Body (Kino 7-8/2006). Grzegorz Królikiewicz died 0n 21 September 2017.
Selected feature and documentary films:
- 1966 - Everyone Gets What They Need the Least, feature etude.
- 1969 – Mężczyźni / Men. Service in the Polish People’s Army from the draft to the oath. A contrast between the cheerful commentary and the discouraging reality, not so much of the army, as of communist Poland. The film was withheld from distribution by censorship until 1989.
- 1969 – Loyalty. A story about the battle fought by captain Władysław Raginis near Wizna in September 1939.
- 1971 - Letter from a Murderer. A letter from an anonymous sender – a German from West Germany – reveals secrets about war crimes. This film was presented on television as part of the cycle Facts State.
- 1972 – Don’t Cry. A farewell to friends going to the army. A tale of the end of freedom. Distributed since 1981.
- 1972 - Na wylot / Through And Through written and directed by Królikiewicz. The film has been compared to Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky since it tells the story of murderers of the Malisz family. It is a sincere confession of a couple, whose humiliating life in poverty made them commit crime. They do not fight for themselves but for each other.
- 1974 - Wieczne pretensje / Constant Complaints, written, directed and edited by Królikiewicz. Two average characters clash with the reality of the Communist period in Poland. An impression on moral attitudes and the lack of fundamental values.
- 1977 - Tańczący jastrząb / Dancing Hawk, based on a novel by Julian Kawalec. An attempt at synthesis of cultural and social changes during the Communist period in Poland presented through the life of a peasant boy, Michał Toporny, who thanks to his stubbornes overcomes the social barriers. Yet, he pays his success with the happiness of his family. The film was shot by a reknown Polish cinematographer, Oscar-winning Zbigniew Rybczyński.
- 1981 - Klejnot wolnego sumienia / Jewel Of A Free Conscience, written together with Mirosław Korolko and based on an early poem by Juliusz Słowacki Jan Bielecki.
- 1984 – Zabicie ciotki / Killing Auntie, written together with Krzysztof Skudziński and based on a novel by Andrzej Bursa.
- 1988 – Rhapsody. A symbolic funeral of a partisan. Until then it was forbidden to celebrate him.
- 1989 – Go (also the arrangement of music and editing). The movie tells a story of an annual trip to the mountains a mountaineer takes with his horse. There the horse is killed for food for a bear. The film is dedicated to three cameramen, who were the director’s friends: Zbigniew Kaliniewicz, Stanisław Latałło and Stanisław Jaworski, who died in the mountains.
- 1992 – The Scythians. A film about Russia. A poem by the Russian poet Alexander Blok entitled Scythians is the movie’s starting point.
- 1993 - Przypadek Pekosińskiego / Pekosiński's Case, based on a story by Romualda Karaś, Nazywam się Pekosiński / My Name Is Pekosiński. The feature is a story about a real, 53-year-old man from the city of Zamość who does not know anything about himself – his date of birth, surname, any data about him are made up.
- 1995 - Drzewa / Trees (written together with Jerzy Jankowski); a parable about trees that sense fear, about their annihilation and killing the man protecting the forest.
- 1999 – Across the Body. A record of a trial against special police officers, who after many years, were accused of torturing members of a secret scout organization. Torturers and victims. The movie shows the special police officers, who don’t feel guilty, and the former scouts, who for their activity in secret student organizations, fell into their hands.
- 2001 - Niewinne kamery / Innocent Cameras directed and edited by Królikiewicz. The documentary shows the stories of cinematographers working at the National Television during the Communist Period in Poland. They tell about the creation of news reports in the 60s', 70s' and 80s', about the ubiquitous propaganda having hardly anything in common with sticking to facts.
- 2007 - Bardzo krótki strajk / A Very Short Strike, written and directed by Królikiewicz. A documentary combined of interviews with students and witnesses of the students' strike in December '81 at the University of Łódź; with archive footage, staged scenes and a psychodrama showing the Motorized Reserves of the Citizens' Militia's attack on buildings occupied by the students.
- 2015 – Sąsiady / Neighbours, a story about residents of a tenement house in Łódź, about their secrets and personal tragedies.
Awards and honours:
- 1966 – The first place at the Festival of Student Etudes in Łódź for the film Kąpiel / Bath;
- 1967 – Award at the Festival of Student Etudes in Łódź for his feature etude Everyone Gets What They Need the Least;
- 1969 - Distinction in the short film category for director’s debut for the film Mężczyźni / Men at the Youth Film Meetings The Young and Film in Koszalin;
- 1972 - The Brown Lajkonik Award at the 12th National Short Film Competition in Kraków for the short Don't Cry; Golden Screen Award for a series of educational programmes Fakty mówią / The facts speak;
- 1973 – The Josef von Sternberg Award, the FIPRESCI Award and the International Evangelical Film Award for the film Na wylot / Through and Through granted at the 22nd International Film Festival in Mannheim;
- 1974 - Samowar'73 – the Film Society Award for Na wylot / Through and Through for an innovative form, creativity and peculiarity of the work; The Golden Camera Award of the Film magazine for the best directing debut among Polish feature films for Na wylot / Through and Through.
- 1975 – The Journalists Award at the Polish Feature Film Festival in Gdańsk for the best picture Wieczne pretensje / Constant Complaints; The Golden Screen Award for Toporny / Crude;
- 1976 - The Award of the Culture and Art Committee of the People's Republic of Bulgaria for directing Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Faust granted at the International Television Theatre Festival in Sofia; The Golden Screen Award for the performance Trzeci maja / Third of May; The Special Jury Prize for the Polish Television Theatre for Trzeci maja / Third of May granted at the Polish Television Theatre Festival in Olsztyn;
- 1977 – Grand Prix of the 4th Polish Feature Film Festival in Gdańsk for directing Tańczący jastrząb / Dancing Hawk; The First Award of the Radio and Television Committee for directing Jerzy Mikke's and Jerzy Łojek's Trzeci maja / Third of May; The Special Prize for directing Trzeci maja / The Third of May at the at the Polish Television Production Festival in Olsztyn;
- 1978 – The Golden Screen Award for a series of plays Kronika Polska /The Chronicle of Poland; the Złote Grono Award for the film Na wylot / Through and Through at the 10th Lubuskie Film Summer in Łagów; the Special Prize for 'combining the image with the sound' in the film Tańczący jastrząb / Dancing Hawk at the San Remo Intenrational Film Festival;
- 1979 – The Golden Screen Award, a group prize for the creators of the performances of the Fact Theatre for their innovation in the field of dramaturgy and their input in reflections on the Polish culture;
- 1981 – The "Panama Viejo" Special Jury Award for directing Klejnot wolnego sumienia / Jewel Of A Free Conscience at the International Film Festival in Panama;
- 1983 – A distinction for the film Klejnot wolnego sumienia / Jewel Of A Free Conscience at the 9th Film Meetings The Young and Film in Koszalin;
- 1985 – a distinction for the film Zabicie ciotki / Killing Auntie at the Film Debut Festival The Young and Film in Koszalin;
- 1988 – The Special Prize for the film Prekursor / Precursor at the 10th Socio-Political Film Festival in Łódź; an award for 'exploration in the field of the language of cinema' for the film Pergamin Konfederacji Warszawskiej 1573 / Parchment of the Warsaw Confederation 1573 at the National Short Film Festival in Kraków;
- 1989 - The Special Prize for the film Rapsod / Rhapsody at the 2nd Polish Film Festival on Months of National Memory in Warsaw; The Head of Cinematography Award for the best documentary of the year 1988 for Prekursor / Precursor; the Brown Lajkonik Award and Award of the Foundation for Polish Culture for Idź / Go granted at the 29th Cracow Film Festival; an award for directing Idź / Go granted at the International Film Festival in Trento; Special Distinction for Mężczyźni / Men awarded at the 17th Youth Film Meetings The Young and Film in Koszalin;
- 1991 – An award for the film Człowiek ze studni / The Man From The Well at the International Film Festival in Montecatini;
- 1992 – Certificate of Merit Award for the documentary Scytowie / The Scythians at the International Film Festival in Chicago; an award for the best documentary film for Scytowie / The Scythians at the International Film Festival in Troyes; an award for the documentary Scytowie / The Scythians at the International Documentary Film Festival Vision du Reel in Nyon;
- 1993 - The Golden Lion Award for the best film Przypadek Pekosińskiego / Pekosiński's Case at the 18th Polish Feature Film Festival in Gdańsk;
- 1994 – the Srebrne Grono Award for Przypadek Pekosińskiego / Pekosiński's Case at the Lubuskie Lato Filmowe / Lubuskie Film Summer in Łagów; Samowar'93 Award - the Świebodzin Cinema Enthusiasts Award for Przypadek Pekosińskiego / Pekosiński's Case; Special Award for Przypadek Pekosińskiego / Pekosiński's Case at the International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary;
- 1996 – the Special Award for the film Drzewa / Trees at the National Eco Film Festival "Ekofilm";
- 1998 - Prowincjonalia'98 – an honorary award for Królikiewicz's life achievement as film director; Honorary Medal of the Head of the Łódzkie Province for an outstanding contibution for the region;
- 1999 - Grand Prix and the special prize of the Internatonal Organisation of Catholic Film and Audiovision for Zdania i uwagi at the 19th International Catholic Film and Multimedia Festival in Niepokalanów; The Special Brown Lajkonik Award for the screenplay for the film Po całym ciele / Across the Body granted at the Kraków Film Festival;
- 2001 - the Distinguished Cultural Service Award from the Minister of Culture;
- 2011 – Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta awarded by the President of the Republic of Poland for "outstanding contribution to national culture, for achievementin artistic creation and educational activity"; The Award of His Eminence Cardinal Józef Glemp for the film Kern at the International Catholic Film and Multimedia Festival in Niepokalanów;
- 2012 - The Aleksander Kamiński Award for a documentary Wieczny tułacz / Eternal Wanderer at the 22nd Media Festival "Człowiek w Zagrożeniu" in Łódź;
- 2013 - Grand Prix for films Mit o Szarym / A Myth About Szary and Wieczny tułacz / Eternal Wanderer at the podczas Polonia Multimedia Festival "Polish Homelands"; Gloria Artis Gold Medal for Contributors to Polish Culture; The "Platynowy Opornik" Award at the 5th Documentary Film Festival „Niepokorni Niezłomni Wyklęci” in Gdynia for life achievements;
- 2014 – The Special Golden Dinosaur Award at the 21st International Film Festival "Etiuda & Anima" in Kraków.
Author: Jan Strękowski, December 2006; updated November 2016 (ND).
