POLISH FILM ACADEMY

Film, theatre and television director, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, producer and educator. He was born on November 1, 1947, in Radomyśl Wielki. He studied at the Technical University in Gliwice. Graduate of psychology at Jagiellonian University in Krakow (1975) and the Directing Department of the State School of Film, Television and Theatre in Łódź (1979, diploma in 1982).

Before his feature film debut Smak wody/The Taste of Water (1980), an intimate, ascetic film about a woman who wants to re-evaluate her life, he had made two documentaries: Korowód z morałem/A Procession with a moral (1978) at the Łódź Educational Film Studio and Być ptakiem/To Be a Bird (1979) at the “Czołówka” Film Studio in Warsaw.

He was a co-founder of the Karol Irzykowski Film Studio in Warsaw, where he made the medium-length feature Wigilia ’81/Christmas Eve '81 (1982, premiere in 1988), set in December 1981, ten days after martial law was introduced in Poland, as well as Kornblumenblau (1988), the poignant story of a young talented musician who manages to survive Auschwitz thanks to his skill at playing the accordion, and the difficult days after the liberation of the camp by the Russians. It was awarded in Locarno, Gdynia, Koszalin and Lagów. Another film – Cynga (1991) – based on the memoirs of Jerzy Drewnowski, was also set in a camp. "This is a film about the gulag, but in the formal sense it is a comedy" as, quite perversely, the director described the story, the hero of which managed to avoid one of totalitarianism in 1939, only to fall into the clutches of another. The award-winning Kroniki domowe/Home Chronicles (1997) is a very subjective look – full of poetry and nostalgia – at his own childhood. In 2005, inspired by true events, he made Rozdroże cafe/Crossroads Cafe (awarded in Gdynia), an expressive story about young people from the provinces who come to Warsaw in the hope of improving their financial status, and commit a serious crime. Two years later, he made the experimental treatise on feelings – Z miłości/Out of Love (2007). His latest film, Był sobie dzieciak/There Once Was a Kid (2013) is set during the Warsaw Uprising; it is the story of a young poet, forced to grow up fast because of the war.

Wosiewicz is also the director of the documentary television series Dekalog – Polska 93/The Decalogue – Poland 93 (1993), as well as the interesting feature series Przeprowadzki/Moving (2001), set over a period of a century – from New Year's Eve 1900 to New Year's Eve one hundred years later. Each episode has a distinct storyline devoted to an item lost during one of the title ‘moves’, which plays an important dramatic role.

Jerzy Armata