Andrzej Wajda - Disappointment with the School of Fine Arts (29/222)

To listen to more of Andrzej Wajda’s stories, go to the playlist:    • Andrzej Wajda (Film director)  

Polish film director Andrzej Wajda (1926-2016), whose début films portrayed the horror of the German occupation of Poland, won awards at Cannes which established his reputation as storyteller and commentator on Polish history. He also served on the national Senate from 1989-91. [Listener: Jacek Petrycki]

TRANSCRIPT: Following '48, when the PPR, the Polish Worker's Party and PPS, the Polish Socialist Party, joined forces, the country became completely sovietised. There was one other moment that I forgot to mention that put me off painting but which I ought to add. It was when we, who believed that reality needed to be presented, that those things we had behind us, the war we had been through needed to be represented, suddenly learned that this wasn't important at all. Some artists arrived from Warsaw bringing with them an imitation of Soviet art and suddenly it transpired that this was what mattered, this was the art the authorities expected us to produce. We were thoroughly disillusioned. I realised that there was nothing left for me here to pursue, and I think it was one of the reasons why I left art school without much regret although I wasn't very enthusiastic about joining the film school. Of course it was fantastic that the film school, that I suddenly found myself by a camera. The camera was the embodiment of the 21st century. It was a fantastic thing, a thrilling invention in itself. There was no instrument that was more modern than this one, and we could feel it. In this respect, I felt that I was in the right place, where I ought to be. But what was this camera supposed to express, what was it relating? I have to say that here I was to be disillusioned. One the one hand, I saw a battle, a real battle. Because in our naivety, we at the School of Fine Arts had simply been enthusiasts of an unexpressed reality whereas at film school a group of students simply wanted to have real authority through the basic Party organisation which influenced everything that happened in the school through the youth organisation, ZMP, which arranged our evening sing-a-longs, shows and other events that were a parody of the things that we'd had in mind when we'd involved ourselves in social activities at the School of Fine Arts.