In the Limelight: Andrzej Wajda

"In the Limelight: Andrzej Wajda" – Andrzej Wajda in conversation with Ulrich Gregor, moderated by Mark LeFanu. Berlinale Talent Campus, February 12, 2008.

CINEMA AS ART AND POLITICAL DISCOURSE

Mark LeFanu: Good morning everybody and welcome to this important and very much look-forwarded-to event. I would like to say a few words of introduction about Andrzej Wajda and his career. He is of course a legend and one of the most important European film directors. It is now exactly fifty years of one of the greatest European films, ASHES AND DIAMONDS (POPIÓL I DIAMENT, 1958), and it is a film that still lives. It is available on DVD, Criterion have a very nice edition of it, and it is one of the living classics. Andrzej Wajda has made I wanted to say fifty films, but the International Movie Database says 49, what a pity! But it is almost fifty films, and we are going to be encountering a discussion of a number of them this morning. I would like to mention two in this brief introduction. The first of these is a film that came out in 1975, a film called LAND OF PROMISE (ZIEMIA OBIECANA), and it tells of the construction of industry in the city of Lodz in the 19th century, a time of industrial revolution. I mention this film because as I was watching one of the big movies that everyone is talking about at the festival, THERE WILL BE BLOOD (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2008), which has this extraordinary reconstruction of California at the turn of the century, again and again I was thinking I have seen this sort of thing already done just as magnificently and ambitiously in Andrzej Wajda’s film made over 30 years ago. I wonder whether a film of such ambition could be made now in the European language? Or whether those kind of films necessarily now have to be made in English? A third film that I would like to mention, his new film KATYN (2007), which has just come out, the film is being shown in the festival. This is a very important and beautiful film that tells of a deeply tragic episode in Polish history, and I am certain we will come back to that in the discussion today.

Ulrich Gregor: Good morning everyone. I was asked that we show one or two film extracts from Andrzej Wajda’s work, and what to show is difficult because he has made so many important films. But I thought one film that is very meaningful for us is MAN OF MARBLE (CZLOWIEK Z MARMURU), made in 1977, and then his last film KATYN. Lets see the extracts now to give an introduction to these films and the work of Andrzej Wajda.

[A clip is screened – MAN OF MARBLE.]

Ulrich Gregor: I like this sequence because of the incredible energy of this young lady who wants to make the film. I think this energy is somehow the energy of Andrzej Wajda himself. This film is about a worker. You see at the beginning some images which are representative for the Stalinist period. In fact the black and white is the resume of the entire film. This worker is first a hero and then he gets sent to prison, and the story of the film is to research and to find the truth of the life of this worker. The second extract is from the film KATYN. I think I would like to first say one word about the historical background because not everyone will be familiar with it. It concerns a terrible crime, which was committed in the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Second World War. In September 1939 Germany invaded Poland. It was the beginning of the Second World War and just shortly before there was a pact between Germany and the Soviet Union between Hitler and Stalin about how they would draw the dividing line. There was a Western part of Poland, which was to be controlled by Germany, and an Eastern part, which was to be controlled by the Soviet Union. After the Germany army had invaded, the Polish army found itself in the eastern part and they were captured, taken prisoners by the Soviets even though there was no war between Soviet Union and Poland. But 14,000 officers were taken prisoner and put into camps, and finally they were all assassinated in the year 1940, and put into mass graves. This crime, the Germans blamed the Soviets, which was correct, but the Soviets said this was a German crime, and that was the official version up until the end of Communist regime. If you were to mention the Katyn crime was committed by the Soviet Union then you would be put into prison. I would like to show a small extract from this film, where somebody has made a gravestone and the gravestone has the date of the actual killing, and this gravestone should be put in a church, but the priest is afraid and says they will not accept this stone. So the lady goes to a cemetery where she talks to her sister. Afterwards she is arrested, questioned by the police, put in prison, and the last image is that the gravestone has been broken into pieces. A short resume of political history of Poland in a way.

[A clip is screened – KATYN.]

Ulrich Gregor: In this film they mention what is called the "rising", and this is the uprising of the Polish population and the underground army in Warsaw at the end of the war, it was a heroic and tragic event where the city was destroyed entirely. Many victims and the Soviets did not intervene even though they were very near and could have intervened. It seems to me that the element that appears in many films of Andrzej Wajda is interest and research for history, also contemporary history and especially Polish history, and also the fight for truth. This we could see in both extracts. The fight for truth and the fight against false myths and legends. I would like to ask Mr Andrzej Wajda about this interest in history and also about fighting for the truth. Where are the origins for him for this attitude, how did it develop, and what are the chances and possibilities. What can you achieve with your films in this battle to find out the truth about history and in the present?

WAKING UP A SLEEPING COUNTRY

Andrzej Wajda (translated): I have always had the impression or notion that a nation that doesn’t know its own history is not a true nation, it is just a random group of people. And I didn’t want the Polish people to be a random group of people, I want them to be a nation. And we as a nation made many mistakes but I always thought that we deserved to know our own history and to be independent from all other nations. And of course my films were never made whenever I wanted them to be made. They were always only made when it was possible. The screenplay for MAN OF MARBLE was prepared in the early 1950s but then the screenplay had to wait twelve years in order for me to actually make the film because I had to wait for appropriate political circumstances in Poland. What was original in this film? The communists thought that a government, which is supposed to represent all the peasants, the peasants shouldn’t speak out because they are represented by the government. But this is actually not true because it is the capitalistic countries where workers and peasants are represented, whereas in communist countries they are under-represented and no-one listens to them. So the way that this film was developed was fairly unexpected because in the scene we have just seen, we see an apology to the workers and showing them as heroes whereas the true protagonist, the true hero of this film becomes the lady who tries to make a film. It was mentioned that there is a certain speed in this film, which is also visible in that extract, but in fact we were living in a country that was fast asleep and we had to wake it up. I am going to tell you a short anecdote that happened a year after the film had been produced. I received a message from a film college in New York City. The letter said that thanks to the film, MAN OF MARBLE, lots of the students of this film school managed to finish their graduation films because they were encouraged by this film. So the letter was saying a big thank-you to myself for supporting the American film industry. Apart from the insides and the plot of the film we were also interested in the form. We didn’t want our films to be like the Soviet ones. We wanted our temperaments to be considered Western European.

A FILM IMPOSSIBLE TO BE MADE DURING THE COMMUNIST TIME

Now I would like to say some words about the second film that we saw an extract from, KATYN. That film has waited even longer than MAN OF MARBLE to actually be put into reality because as long as the communist regime was present in the Polish reality it was absolutely impossible to even talk about Katyn. This murder in Katyn was a fairly extraordinary one, as no-one has ever heard of soldiers being taken into captivity in order to be brutally killed. A naive Polish army got taken into Soviet captivity and then brutally murdered. 22,000 Polish soldiers including my father, who was a captain of the Polish army, were brutally murdered, but the interesting thing is that it has all been written down and recorded how each and every one was brutally murdered. There was no possibility for the Polish-Soviet friendship to exist because of Katyn, so the Soviets put all the responsibility onto the Germans. That is why it was so difficult for the film to be made. It was impossible to be made during the communist time as I have already mentioned, and after that we were looking for an appropriate form for the film to have. I am also going to mention that I have not only had a couple, but I had dozens of screenplays that I had to flick through before I actually decided which one is going to be the one. This extract from KATYN that we have just seen has obviously got its origins in Sophocles and Antigone, where also two sisters talk about their brother who has been murdered. There are many years that separate those two films, MAN OF MARBLE and KATYN. There are even more years that lie between KATYN and ASHES AND DIAMONDS, the film that was mentioned at the beginning. But as soon as we realise what our history is then we need to show it. When KATYN was shown in Warsaw, someone came to me and said thank-you, and shook my hand saying I finally know the way it really looked like. This is an attempt to answer the question why my fascination with the Polish history. I think this is my duty. This is the role I put on myself and I want to fulfil that duty until the end.

PROBLEMS WITH CENSORSHIP

Ulrich Gregor: I must say that MAN OF MARBLE was an important film for us, people living in the West, as a symbol of hope. Suddenly it seems that change is possible. A new thinking is emerging and new possibilities maybe. On the other hand, this film was made in 1977 and the Solidarnosc movement was only in 1980, so your film was earlier. And I imagine in 1977 it must have been difficult to actually make this film. Did you have any problems with censorship at the time?

Andrzej Wajda: I had an ally who was Minister of Arts and Culture back then in Poland and I managed to encourage and convince him that this film is going to show his past as well, because he himself was a worker in a city that was established near Krakow back then. So no, there were no problems with censorship. Problems with censorship emerged later after the film had been made. There was a scene in the film that showed a protest of workers staged in Gdansk in 1970 that was brutally put into peace by the police, and then the authorities in Poland considered it absolutely not acceptable for the film to show it, so I had to cut the scene off the film.

Ulrich Gregor: The scene with the fish?

Andrzej Wajda: There was a scene in which the young female filmmaker in the extract that we have just seen tries to get to know about those uprisings in Szczecin and Gdansk in 1970. There is a time shift so it is years later and she goes to meet the son of the protagonist of MAN OF MARBLE and tries to get information where the father’s grave is and if she can put flowers on it. There is this rule that they had to be careful in the police that they could not kill more than 49 people because after the number 50 there is a rule that the United Nations would intervene in Poland, so they were very careful to kill only 49. Obviously it is impossible to find the grave because no-one knows, and she just goes and puts flowers on a symbolic grave in a cemetery. And this was the scene I had to cut off the film, which was fairly strange because in reality it was fairly symbolic and less political it would seem.

IT SEEMED RIDICULOUS TO PROHIBIT PEOPLE THEIR WILL TO SEEING A FILM

Ulrich Gregor: I would like to ask a question about the echo of the films and the reception from the audiences. Could you describe MAN OF MARBLE for instance – how was this film received? What did it provoke in the audience? And a more general question, what do you think that the film can actually achieve? Is it possible for a film to change something? To change people’s minds maybe?

Andrzej Wajda: I am strongly convinced that we have to fight for our freedom. And loads of people such as writers, poets, film directors, theatre directors in Poland were fighting for that. So, we thought it was our duty to move the borders of what was allowed and what was not allowed, so that one day we can have a free Poland, which eventually happened. The authorities decided that the film was going to be shown in only one cinema in Warsaw, but in front of the cinema there is a big plaza, and there were a couple of thousands of people in front of the cinema manifesting their will to see the film. And there was a problem because the authorities were unsure if they should send in the police to get rid of the crowd but then it seemed ridiculous to prohibit people their will to seeing a film. So it turned out to be quite a smart solution, and a ridiculous situation that the authorities were put into. Therefore it was then decided to screen the film in other cinemas as well, and that is what happened. But in order to make it more difficult for the people, in the newspaper column listing when the film is being shown, it was always written that the screening is fully booked because they didn’t want to make the title, MAN OF MARBLE, too visible. So, very often the title was replaced by the line "Fully Booked", so actually that was the title under which this film became well known, not MAN OF MARBLE, but "Fully Booked". It doesn’t happen very often in the life of a film director but it happened to me back then. I had the impression that I see the audience of my film, and that they consider what I am doing very important. I was told that in Moscow, a film called L’AVVENTURA (1960) by Michelangelo Antonioni was shown. Antonioni flew into Moscow, was picked up at the airport, and taken to the cinema where the film was being shown. He arrives and the crowds in front of the cinema are so tight that there is no way for him to actually get through. The people taking care of him were trying to calm him down and saying don’t worry, the police will come soon and make you a path through the crowds to get to the cinema and Antonioni said those beautiful words back then: "No, let them watch, for a little while at least." There was a spectacular thing back then for him because it was only possible in countries like Poland and communist countries such as Soviet Union, to see the audience fighting to see the film. This was also true for films coming from Western countries, for example films made by Federico Fellini, and other such directors. Because for us it was clear that cinema is not only art but it is also political discourse.

POSSIBILITIES OF EXPORTING FILMS

Ulrich Gregor: We made a visit to Poland in 1981 to a festival for Polish films. That was the time of Solidarnosc and it was a wonderful atmosphere even though there were some problems with food and gasoline. We went there by car and we came back with several posters, and there was one poster from MAN OF MARBLE where you see a human figure and around the head is a ring of iron, and this iron is split open. When we drove back from Poland to Berlin through East Germany, the border control asked where we were coming from and to show what we had with us. And they confiscated the poster of MAN OF MARBLE. Was this film shown in other communist countries?

Andrzej Wajda: No, the film was not regularly exported. It was fairly rarely shown. And the thing was that the film scene back then in Poland was mostly represented by filmmakers themselves, so it was possible to separate the politics from the filmmakers who represented themselves. A similar system was established in Hungary, and in the Czech Republic, so the film was largely distributed in those countries as well because we had contacts to those filmmakers, whereas it was hardly ever shown in the Soviet Union. There was also the system of film clubs, so lots of films from abroad were shown explicitly in small cinemas. It wasn’t easy to see loads of films back then in Poland.

WHO AM I MAKING THIS FILM FOR?

Ulrich Gregor: I think the politics were more liberal in Poland and more foreign films were permitted. Our friends in East Berlin, they went to Poland to see Western films which they couldn’t see in their own country. I have another question, about KATYN. KATYN speaks of events which are far back in history, and they concern the older generation obviously. How was the reception of this film? Is it also a subject, which reaches the younger audience of today?

Andrzej Wajda: I have to admit, this is the question that I am very often asked, and that I ask myself as well. People tend to ask me, who am I making this film for, because if you want a mainstream cinema film then you need an audience rating from 15-25, and you have to make something they are going to appreciate and like. But there is also an older generation who goes to the cinema, and there are many families who still remember members who were killed in the Katyn mass-murder. But I have to admit that it was really difficult to make a film that will please everyone. I still think it is impossible, and in the process of making it I had several moments where I was full of doubts and I was thinking that I couldn’t make it, and hoping someone else would take the costs off my shoulders. But I always came back to the main path and the thought that I have to make this film. I have to do it, even if some of the audience, the audience of MAN OF MARBLE for instance, would appreciate a different speed, a different tempo of that film. So, then I decided to make a film that was going to please myself, and that may please other people as well, younger and older. I thought the power of this film was going to show only true stories, so I looked in the diaries of those women who lost their husbands or brothers in that mass murder. I wanted to show only the things that really happened, that were lived by the family. That was the way it actually happened. Even a scene in this film where the Polish flag is being torn apart, and the white bit is being used by a soviet soldier to clean his shoes, and the red bit is left. Even that scene is true. In fact, both young and older audiences have seen the film in Poland. Three million people already saw the film in Polish cinemas. Obviously there is the question whether it is going to have an impact with an international audience, and we never know that but we will see soon. And back to what you said before, that it was easier to see films in communist Poland rather than East Berlin, we felt a kind of friendship with our East German neighbours because we knew they are going to see our films. It was a simple reason that everyone was curious about what was going on behind that border, and people expected subconsciously probably, that the people behind the Polish border are actually going to be a little bit like us, the East Germans. And that is why they were very interested, and expected from the Polish films to show them that we are the same. This applied to the whole of East Germany, but especially East Berlin, where we had friends and Polish films were welcomed and found their true audience. How it is going to be today, I don’t know.

Ulrich Gregor: Three million spectators for KATYN. I think that is exceptional for Poland isn’t it?

Andrzej Wajda: Yes, but HARRY POTTER won in that competition.

FOUNDING A FILM SCHOOL IN POLAND

Ulrich Gregor: There are many things, which we could speak about, but I think one thing that could interest our audience here, is to hear something about your film school, which you have created in Warsaw. Could you talk a little bit about this film school, since when it exists, and how it is organised, and what are you trying to do there?

Andrzej Wajda: The school inherited its structure from organisations that were established at the end of the 1940s. It is a spectacular thing in this communist Poland, it was possible for filmmakers to establish little film groups. At the front of each group there was the film director, and then all the other people who were supporting him. And this was especially important for me because I myself started my film career in one of those film groups. This notion of being together in such a group was unbelievably important for us. This system of those film groups does not exist anymore in Poland but our intention in creating this school, this film academy, was to encourage people to make films, and to show them that being together in a group of people who all have the same aim, namely to want to make a film, is very important. The intention is to show students who have already graduated from various film schools, or who are writers, or theatre directors… The intention is to re-establish this notion of working together in a group like it was back in the 1940s. The school has been there for the last five years and we have got a group of Polish students, about fifteen people, and there is also an international course for international students, mainly from Germany, Switzerland, Norway and Denmark, who have an idea of a film they want to make and want to realise it in Poland. I am doing this together with Wojciech Marczewski. We also are leading an independent line of documentary films in our school with professional documentary film directors. We also have a course for younger people, who are just before their A-Levels, and it is called "Film Kindergarten", because we want to make sure they know how important it is to make films and how big an impact a film can have.

Ulrich Gregor: So, if you speak about films, which are made in such a way by groups, are these films produced by the school itself or are they produced outside, and where does the budget come from?

Andrzej Wajda: Very often it is not entire films, which are being filmed or made in our school, rather only scenes. Only documentaries are being made and produced as a whole.

ONE EYE FOR THE ACTORS, ONE EYE FOR THE MAKERS

Ulrich Gregor: I think we should give the audience a chance to ask questions.

Question: I would like to ask if you could tell us a bit more about your directing on set.

Andrzej Wajda: I have to say that the most important moment in making a film, just like in all other kinds of arts, such as writing or theatre, when you need an enormous dose of inspiration in you, is the choice of actors. In the film from which we have seen an extract, MAN OF MARBLE, the actress playing the young filmmaker, she had just graduated from film school, and this was the first time she stood in front of a camera. I also read a book that was translated into English, called "Double Vision", and this was about the fact that the director always has to have two eyes, two different ways of seeing. With one eye he sees the action of the film, which he sees during the shot, and with the other eye he observes the other people who stand behind the camera, who make the film. So, with one eye, the actors, with the other eye, the makers. So, that was the way it was in that particular context in film. I was rehearsing some actors in front of me, but with my other eye I could see the actress Christina, who was preparing herself and getting nervous behind me. And I saw the way she smokes. I had never seen anyone so nervous. When I told her to get in front of the camera, I said: "Please smoke now." And I saw exactly the same thing. And then I realised she was a true actress, she wasn’t an amateur, because if you tell an amateur to do the same again, then he or she is completely confused and no longer know what it was they were doing, whereas she knew exactly, she was completely conscious about her nervousness, and the way she was smoking this particular cigarette. For some time, my assistant was Agnieszka Holland, and I said to her: "Look at her, she plays the director role very well." I think this is the most important thing. If you find actors who are extraordinary, irreplaceable and new to the world, then the film must be a success.

POLISH FILM TO IMPROVE ITS POPULARITY IN GERMANY

Question: First of all, thank you for coming. I think it is fantastic that you are here at this film festival. I am half Polish, half German, and I am very surprised to see that the Polish film has very little presence on the German film market, even on television. I was wondering if you have any suggestions or ideas how Polish film can improve its popularity in Germany. And especially in Germany because the relationship with Poland is very complicated. My other question would be, what is the next film project you will be doing, or the next story you are going to make a film about?

Andrzej Wajda: I have to say, this is a very difficult question for me to answer, what are we supposed to do in order that Polish films can be more popular in Germany. As long as the Berlin wall existed, Polish films were very welcomed in the Eastern side, and the audience were interested because the films talked about topics that were actual and up-to-date in Germany as well. Now we need to find subjects or topics for films that will interest the German audience. It also has to be underlined that it doesn’t necessarily have to be a taboo, that political or historical films cannot be shown in Germany or Poland. For example, the film LIFE OF OTHERS (DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006), a German film that was screened in Poland, was very warmly welcomed, and seen by many people. And to answer your second question, my next film I would like to be a contemporary film, which will talk about contemporary issues, but I have not yet found a protagonist, nor an issue that would be interesting enough yet. So I have to say, I have not decided yet on my next film but I want to make it this year.

SORTING OUT SCREENPLAYS

Question: I would like to ask a short question regarding KATYN. You say you had a dozen of screenplays. Could you tell us a bit about the process of how you sorted out all the screenplays?

Andrzej Wajda: The main problem was, was whether this film was supposed to talk about and present one particular family, or whether it was supposed to consist of more. And I had lots of ideas of different dialogues, different scenes, different conversations between different people, and it wouldn’t be enough to present it in one family only, where you would have only three or four members. So I finally decided to choose those four sub-stories in order to show all the things I had in my mind together in one film. And also I wanted, as I have already mentioned, everything to be true, even this story about this Soviet major, which although consisted of two different stories, also was true. Also, the question of whether I really needed to show the murder itself, whether I really needed to show the bloodshed. And I understood that the answer is yes, because this is the first film about Katyn. And although I knew that the history of Katyn is relatively well-known in Poland, I decided and I knew that the bloodshed needs to be shown itself. I wanted the film to be fairly objective, I didn’t want to make any conflicts between the Russians and the Poles. The film talks about, and shows, the Stalin regime that was acting against Poles, as well as against Russians. So, when in this forest in Katyn in 1937 where so many Russian soldiers and civilians were killed, we decided that it needs to have a place in this film.

WORKING WITH COMPOSERS

Question: You worked with several great Polish composers in your films. I was wondering if you could talk about how you work with music in your films. And in your new film you are using disputably the most important Polish composer of our time, Krzysztof Penderecki, and I was wondering why you chose him, and how it was to work with him?

Andrzej Wajda: I make different kinds of films, therefore I am interested in different composers and different kinds of music. For example it is a completely different story to make MAN OF MARBLE, or THE PROMISED LAND, and it is a different story to make KATYN. A couple of years ago in St Petersberg I was in part of a concert that was conducted by Krzysztof Penderecki himself. In the corridor he came and started to talk to me, and said "ah, Katyn, if you want you can have my music". A director should listen to what others tell him, and I listened carefully. So when I actually started to make the film KATYN I reminded him of that promise. I didn’t hope for him to write the music for the film. I think music explains a lot in the film and tells the audience what kind of film they are watching, whether it is a comedy or a tragedy, so it helps to establish a communication between the director and the audience. Music composed by Krzysztof Penderecki is something completely unknown for today’s audience, for the young people, it is something completely new to put such kinds of music to such kinds of pictures and scenes. And I think the surprise by the choice of music actually helped this film because the young audience watching this film had the impression that this is something different, this is something we have not seen before. I was also worried what Krzysztof Penderecki is going to say to my mosaic made out of different pieces of his music that I cut out of context and put together in a completely different order. But Penderecki has a big warm heart and understood it was needed for the film to be good.

Mark LeFanu: These kinds of occasions are as well as being incredibly enjoyable are also very frustrating because of course we could go on with many more questions. But we have to unfortunately bring it to an end here. I would first of all like to thank Ulrich Gregor for his kind and genial questions, also to thank our translator, and also to thank Mr Wajda himself for giving such generous, interesting and fascinating answers to this interview. Thank you very much indeed.