Andrzej Wajda - 'Katyń' (187/222)

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: What am I faced with? What next? What can the old classic say after having made two films like 'Pan Tadeusz' and 'Revenge'? Should he carry on making films of this kind? No. I think there's a need to reply to the question... We all feel one thing, that there is a reality that exists and we can see it hasn't been represented. It hasn't been represented either in literature or on the screen, and I believe that the young generation of film directors, including our friends the young film-makers who have come into contact with our master school, are striving to show this existing world. I'm thinking about this, too. But I try here to use a certain ploy and I think to myself that it's often said, well it was all meant to have been so different, Solidarność presented a different image of our country from the one we're seeing now. It could be interesting, this is what I think, and I'd like to see a film where the main protagonists of 'Man of Iron', which was made in '81, return to the screen 20 years or more later. What would they find today? How do they perceive this reality? How do they judge this reality and what is it like? Thanks to the fact that it can be seen through their eyes, I think a film like that could be a more expressive contemporary film than just a photograph of the reality we have before us. There's one other vast old subject that I've always had in mind but which is impossible to make into a film, and that's the Katyń massacre. It started when 10,000 Polish officers were taken prisoner on 17 September by the Soviet army which had occupied half of Poland on the basis of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. These 10,000 officers were executed within a month in '40 and buried; it seemed that this secret would never be exhumed from the earth. However, this didn't happen and the secret was unearthed. The Germans discovered these graves and the Soviet Union attempted to cast all the blame for this crime on the Germans. I have to say that I remember how in '43, together with my mother, we read my father's name on this list or at least the name of an officer who had the same name - my father died somewhere else. In short, we, too, at first thought this was a crime the Germans had committed. However, the truth came out later. This truth was entirely concealed for as long as the Polish People's Republic existed, during which time it was a German crime. Therefore, it was out of the question for me to make this kind of film. Nevertheless, freedom exists so that we can return to this. It's part of our history without which... it ought to find itself represented, so to speak, in the cinema. The difficulty lies in the fact that it's an event which exists on many levels and there are so many threads to the story all intertwined with each other that it's very difficult to write a screenplay which would embrace the whole spectrum of these events. Perhaps this is why this screenplay is being created so slowly and so painfully. It's interesting that Polish literature, which has represented every significant historical event, has not dealt with this one. There isn't a single story or narrative that could be made into a film. Katyń simply doesn't exist. And it's not just because there was censorship in Poland which wouldn't have permitted such a story - there were great writers living abroad as emigrés. Granted this topic has been covered from every angle by historians who have used every possible source, but it has never been the subject of a great work of literature. This makes my situation as a film director that much harder as I try to make this film. But I think I'm on its trail and I'd like to make a film like this, and this is my plan for the immediate future. Well, what other sort can I have? There's only the immediate one.