Famous People • Film

Andrzej Wajda

(1926) is a Polish film director, recipient of an honorary Oscar and one of the most prominent members of the Polish Film School. He is the son of a Polish cavalry officer murdered by the Soviets in 1940 in what became to be known as the Katyn massacre. Wajda studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow and later finished the Film School in Lodz. His films are often studies of Poland's history and its recent or contemporary politics and often concentrate on the national yearning for freedom.
Man of Iron, where Wajda shown Solidarity movement with Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa appearing as himself in the film, won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1981. Four of Wajda's works (The Promised Land, The Maids of Wilko, Man of Iron, and Katyń ) have been nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign language film. In 2000, Wajda received an honorary Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Roman Polanski

(1933) is one of the world’s best known film directors; he is an actor as well. He speaks five languages: Polish, Russian, English, French and Italian.
He was born in Paris in a Jewish family. As a kid he survived the Holocaust in German Nazi-occupied Poland during WWII. Polanski finished the film school in Lodz. His first major movie was Knife in the Water (1962), a sexually charged psychological drama. It was Polanski's first nomination for the Oscar. Six years later Polanski went to Hollywood, that year made his American debut with the sophisticated psychological thriller Rosemary's Baby, his greatest commercial success (1968). Next year was very hard for Roman Polanski as his wife Sharon Tate who was eight months pregnant, was brutally murdered by Charles Manson's gang. Then he came back to France. In 1974 he returned to the USA with the film Chinatown - detective thriller, which brought him an Academy Award nomination. Four years later Polanski pleaded guilty to the charges to "unlawful sexual intercourse" with a 13-year-old girl and fled to France. He cannot return to the United States without risking arrest, so continues to direct movies and theater and act in films in France and Poland.
Polanski was laureate of the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) award at the Cannes Film Festival on May 26 2002 for “The Pianista” - a brooding, intimate, and fear-haunted drama based on the true story of a Holocaust survivor, later winning the 2002 Academy Award for Directing.

Krzysztof Kieslowski

(1941-1996) was a documentary, TV and feature film director and scriptwriter. He chose film directing because he thought it would be related to the theatre. He was denied acceptance into Lodz Film School twice, passed on the third time. Firstly he made some short documentaries; he debuted on TV with the film "The Underground Passage" in 1974. His next film - "The Staff" (1976) took the Grand Prix at Mannheim. The same year he made his first full-length feature "The Scar".
Kieslowski was associated with the "cinema of moral anxiety”, which grouped several Polish directors, including 'Andrzej Wajda', and aimed to depict the conditions of Poles under communism. In 1989 he was a member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. He is famous for the three colors series "Blue", "White”, and "Red". "Blue" shared the Golden Lion at Venice in 1993, "White" earned him the best director prize in Berlin in 1994 and "Red" brought him an Academy Award nomination for best director in 1995. Kieslowski announced his retirement from film-making after completing "Red". He died during open-heart surgery following a heart attack and was interred in Powązki in Warsaw.

Krystyna Janda

(1952) is one of Poland's most popular film and theatre actress. She is also a director of theatre productions and films. She studied at the State Higher School of Theatre in Warsaw. Janda became famous after playing in Wajda's films "Man of Marble" (1976) and "Man of Iron" (1981). She also starred in Istvan Szabo's highly regarded “Mephisto”. Her acting is highly expressive, her temperament energetic. Later she started to play in sex comedies and sci-fi movies.

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