Presented by the Skalny Center for Polish and Central European Studies and the Dryden Theatre at George Eastman Museum in commemoration of the first anniversary of the death of Andrzej Wajda.
Man of Iron: Remembering Andrzej Wajda
Arguably the greatest Polish filmmaker who, unlike Polański or Kieślowski, never really left his motherland for long, Andrzej Wajda (1926–2016) carved his place in history books as an acute observer of his country’s twentieth-century turmoil. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about Wajda was his ability to work as a state-sponsored filmmaker steadily, continuously for almost seventy years, under two different regimes, directing almost fifty features, often concealing his critical opinions behind metaphors, and never losing his artistic integrity or dignity. We will remember him by screening his magisterial “war trilogy” that has inspired and earned Wajda admiration of such luminaries as Lindsay Anderson, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola, and his most famous and internationally acclaimed epic Man of Iron. Afterimage, his latest and probably most personal achievement, completed only weeks before his death, will be shown on November 7, at the Opening of the Polish Film Festival Part II.