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Andrzej Wajda - No more politics (21/222)

626 views · Published 30 October 2017 · 2:16 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Entertainment

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To listen to more of Andrzej Wajda’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFy6EEYt468zst0wxZgLIw2T

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: In my first year, together with Konrad Nałęcki, with whom I later moved to the Film School and with whom I'd struck up a friendship, and in the spirit of Wróblewski who had written his own, from his own point of view about the School of Fine Arts that it wasn't teaching us how to paint properly. This wasn't going to go down well with our tutors especially since it had appeared in print. It had been printed in the newspaper, and had been passed by the censor. They realised that we wanted to take their place, that we, so to speak, wanted to exploit the fact that the authorities were still looking for other people, for a continuation. They realised it was not an art school that was already established and would remain unchanged for the next 50 years. Suddenly, we were demanding a different kind of education. In this context, the then Minister of Culture Włodzimierz Sokorski, who was a very shrewd man, recalled the rector. Suddenly, it transpired that here we are and we're in charge of the art school, that we're the motivating force behind these events because everyone was afraid of us, considering us to be terrible 'hongweibing' who, so to speak, wanted to take charge here in the art school. This frightened me and I have to say, that so far as, because in the meantime the ZMP had set up in our art school and had begun its activities and we, so to speak, considered that this was a broadening of our self-education group to include a greater number of our fellow students. I have to say that from that point, I lost any willingness to be invloved in politics and then later, in Film School, I was very careful not to become involved in that again.

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