Jaka przyszłość mediów katolickich w USA w XXI wieku? A PHILOSOPHICAL CALL TO RENEW AMERICAN CULTURE:

Jaka przyszłość mediów katolickich w USA w XXI wieku? A PHILOSOPHICAL CALL TO RENEW AMERICAN CULTURE:
Prof. Peter Redpath, Saint John's University, New York (2009-11-21) Inna audycja

słuchaj
zapisz



Future of the United States of America XXI Prof. Peter Redpath, Saint John's University, New York
A PHILOSOPHICAL CALL TO RENEW AMERICAN CULTURE:
The Homeschool Renaissance
by Peter A. Redpath, Ph.D.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Dr. Redpath is a Full Professor of Philosophy at St. John's University; has received numerous awards and honors for his work in philosophy; was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Advanced Philosophical Research in 1988; has made over 70 public program appearances on philosophical topics; has authored numerous books, monographs, and published articles; and has edited two philosophy books. He is a member of the Board of Editors of Editions Rodopi. Dr. Redpath is a Director of The Great Books Academy and Chairman of The Angelicum Academy.



Today, nationally and globally, America is at a crossroad. We face daunting educational and political problems. No social order born of a common conviction in the truth and goodness of its principles can long survive when it cannot rationally justify this conviction. At this historical moment, a critical meltdown is occurring in American educational and political institutions because, increasingly, the general American population and our institutional leaders cannot rationally justify the truth and goodness of the principles upon which our American educational and political institutions depend for their survival and health.
During the twentieth century, totalitarian political systems externally threatened the American democratic concept. In the face of these systems, America generally defended itself through a combination of physical force, free market competition, pragmatic arguments about the superiority of the American way of life, and the moral conviction of the American people about the just nature of their cause and the goodness of their society. At this time in our history, while we still have external enemies, America faces another, more pernicious, internal threat, that we cannot defeat through physical force, the free market, or pragmatic slogans about the superiority of the American way of life: the inability rationally to justify the truth and moral goodness of American society.

Educationally, sophistry reigns supreme in America today. Since 1983, millions of Americans have reached high school senior year without learning the basics of reading, mathematics, and U.S. history. Millions of teenagers have dropped out of high school.1 Today, an average student, even at better American colleges and universities, cannot think abstractly or read a difficult book without individual proctor-ing.2 Many faculty members are illiterate, and, especially in the social sciences, cannot explain the nature of their subject matter, the method their discipline uses, the origin of their principles, or what makes their principles scientific. The State arbitrarily undermines parental authority in favor of "enlightened" social causes. Our public schools cannot teach the philosophical and moral principles that sustain the authority of our political institutions. These schools are crime-ridden. We have reached a point in public education where we cannot agree on curricula, especially in areas of history, ethics, and politics. We are graduating increasing numbers of illiterate students, often warehoused for years by incompetent teachers. Yet our most successful politicians tend to graduate from, and send their children to, private schools.

In politics, we increasingly remove moral principles and truth from the domain of public life. Irrationally and sophistically, we identify the sphere of public life with the secular realm, and justice with the domain of the Machiavellian will-of-the-stronger. Often we judge deceit, selfishness, and subordination of the common good in order to win political office, as hallmarks of wisdom.

States come into being through, are the creation of, other mediating institutions, like families, churches, synagogues, schools, private businesses, and so on. Collections of individuals do not found States as collective wills to which we become serfs. Through representatives, people, as social beings (with skills and factional interests), and as moral agents (with natural rights and duties), and members of communities, establish States as limited, mediating agencies, through which we self-govern ourselves in pursuit of our common good: the more perfect union we achieve through political peace and justice.

The notion of limited government did not begin with modernity or the European Enlightenment. Moses adhered to this principle in his dealings with Pharaoh. The ancient Greeks recognized this principle in their articulation of the four cardinal moral virtues: prudence, justice, temperance, and courage. And St. Thomas Aquinas, referring to St. Augustine, explicitly appeals to this principle in his treatment of the variety of human law in Question 91 of I-II of his Summa Theologiae. 3

Principally and primarily, the State is a peace officer, not a parent, nurturer, clothier, guardian, educator, nor chief economist.

The proper subject of State governance is human freedom. States exist because human freedom exists. States exist to regulate human freedom within the bounds of justice and State competence in order to promote the common good of civic peace and friendship. States exist principally and primarily to regulate human freedom in relation to human exchanges, to maintain peace and order within these exchanges. They do not exist principally and primarily to establish and operate schools, or to run motels, real estate agencies, businesses, hospitals,or restaurants. 4

States come into being because we hu-man beings have a natural desire, and a moral obligation, to pursue our own happiness through exercise of our choices. To pursue our happiness, we must exercise our freedom. To exercise freedom, we need conducive circumstances. The State exists principally and primarily as a peace officer to facilitate the circumstances under which we can justly exercise our political freedom. 5

Freedom is proper to man's nature. In our actions, we have a moral right to exercise our freedom virtuously relative to our personal welfare, and a political right to exercise it justly relative to the common good.

The principal right to reward people for virtue and punish them for vice lies with God, not individual human beings, or the State. Hence, in our dealings with others, we have to be cautious not to overstep the bounds of our moral authority. God has the moral authority to command and reward all acts of virtue and to punish all vice. Individual human beings do not. God's moral authority prohibits all human evils. Individual moral authority only extends to communities over which individuals can exercise competent judgment and influence. For human beings, the domain of any moral authority is always the sphere of the humanly possible relative to some human good. No one, including States or God, has a right to command the impossible, which is what States do when they overextend their authority.

As parents, we cannot outlaw all wrongdoing by our children, and we cannot justly command of them impossible acts of virtue. As human beings, children have a right to exercise their freedom within the bounds of justice and household peace. When they overstep these bounds parents have a moral right to punish them.

Similarly, in the political domain, private morality is the dimension of human freedom related to the pursuit of personal welfare, inasmuch as this has no detrimental impact on civic peace and friendship. From a political perspective, in our private lives, we have a moral jurisdiction that allows us to be as intemperate, cowardly, foolish, and unjust as we please in our dealings with others, until our actions start to undermine civic peace and friendship. The domain of public morality, from which we derive our public moral principles, should not be merely the dimension of secular behavior � the arena of a public secular religion, where only secular reason has a right to speak and where truth is measured by an "enlightened" intellectual elite and governmental bureaucrats. 6

While many people derive their moral principles from religion, others do not. Many people, such as atheists and agnostics, derive their moral principles from personal experience at living, from tradition, or from philosophy. Other people derive their moral principles from revelation. To demand that such people adopt a secular religion before they can enter political debate that involves a common good to which they contribute and common threats by which they are endangered violates human and Constitutional rights to freedom for religion and speech.

Essentially, morality has two domains: our duties toward other people and our duties toward God. Religion is a moral obligation we have toward God. As such, it presupposes, it does not essentially generate, moral principles. God, not religion, is the source of moral principles. God imbeds these principles in human nature, in the voice of conscience, and freely gives this voice to theists, atheists, and agnostics. Religion arises as a reaction in some people to the voice of conscience. The voice of conscience does not arise as an act of religion.




To claim that religion, not God, is essentially the source of morality is a major fallacy of the Enlightenment. It implies that atheists and agnostics are essentially devoid of conscience, are not moral agents, an assertion contradicted by much historical experience. Submission of conscience to the rule of justice imbedded in human inclinations authorizes citizens to have a public voice. This rule of justice relative to the common good, not submission to a secular religion, generates the authority of civil law. The rule of justice relative to the common good, not submission to a secular religion, is the standard of political tolerance. To demand that our right to participate in public moral discourse rests upon adoption of a secular religion and its secularized rules of tolerance violates natural human rights, the American Constitution, and American pluralism.

Public morality is the domain of freedom involving personal exchanges that impact on the common good of civic peace and friendship: the domain of civic justice and public safety. As soon as a human action enters this arena, it passes from morally private to morally public jurisdiction, the arena of public safety regulable by just, not unlimited, tolerance. In this arena, all citizens have a right to a public voice. In this domain, moral responsibility and irresponsibility impact on all citizens regardless of religious or non-religious affiliation. In this arena, the domain of justice and freedom, where human actions impact upon our common good and threaten us with common dangers:

(1) all human beings, by natural possession of a conscience, are competent judges and have a natural right to speak; and,

(2) justice, relative to the common good, establishes the limits of tolerance. Here, the voice of conscience, philosophy, personal experience, and religious traditions all have something to contribute.

Philosophy and the Common Good

For several decades, through increasing identification of the State with the Body Politic, and sophistic appeal to the secularly religious grounds of the State's public morality, we have steadily diminished parental authority over the education of children and decreased the public voice of ordinary citizens, religious leaders, and classical philosophers in political debates that affect our common good and public welfare. The net result of this effort has been an increasing erosion of American educational and political institutions.

Like every constitutional political order, American society came into being through a conventional agreement made by representatives of political factions to unite in the pursuit of a common political good, a more perfect political union. The American government did not create this political vision of the common good. The government's existence presupposed, and arose from, this common goal articulated in the Constitution. The American government exists to preserve, protect, and defend this common good and the principles that sustain it.

The American vision of the common good is historically rooted in Western philosophical and theological convictions about human nature and destiny that the American founders considered to be self-evident. Without familiarity with these convictions, we cannot grasp the nature or meaning of our political institutions and political lives.

We become like strangers wandering amidst foreign and unfamiliar surroundings. We erroneously start to believe that our own self-definition grounds our freedom and political principles.

Central to the Western vision of the common good is a philosophical conviction about the fundamental rationality and dignity of human nature and the theological conviction that human life is guided by a providential creator. The major ancient Greek philosophers never deviated in their judgment that our universe is an intelligible order inhabited by a gradation of beings, each with its own non-relative identity, culminating in human nature, a social animal endowed with the faculty to reason.

The ancient Greek philosophers thought we were born with the natural ability to survey the physical world around us and to extract from our everyday observations of the behavior of physical things the rules whereby we develop our arts, sciences, morals, law, and politics. For these philosophers, inclinations in this organic faculty of reason, whereby we moderate our use of freedom in pursuit of our own welfare and act with reasonable tolerance toward others, constitute the voice of reason - conscience - the locus of the universal moral principles that determine moral normalcy. They thought that to ignore, or to behave contrary to, reason's dictates was vicious, made us less human and more beastly, and eventually led to our emotional, intellectual, and social corruption.7

Medieval Jewish, Muslim, and Christian thinkers inherited and preserved the Greek philosophical view of nature, the arts, and sciences, and built around them our Western cultural, educational, theological, legal, and political traditions. For several centuries, but especially within the past several decades, the ancient Greek understanding of philosophy and human nature has decreased in some of these traditions. Wherever this has occurred, disaster has resulted. Philosophy is the only rational knowledge by which we can judge the principles of demonstration in our arts and sciences, evaluate the worth of our knowledge, identify and evaluate our criteria of truth, distinguish sound from unsound arguments, and unify our sciences into an order of higher learning. And philosophical reflection upon the behavior of human beings, understood as rational animals, is the only means we have to establish a rationally justified ethics and a concept of the person that can sustain democratic government.

Democratic government presupposes a specific vision of the common human good. And our concept of a common human good necessarily contains our concept of human nature. Democratic government is a type of government naturally best suited for achieving the common good of rational animals, not of irrational animals or angels. Totalitarianism suits beasts. Theocracy befits angels.

At present, we Americans find ourselves in a state of educational and political decay because we have lost our understanding of the nature of classical philosophy and the essential role it plays in integrating all our branches of knowledge, our cultural and political institutions, in justifying our common vision of our common political good, and rationally articulating the jurisdictional lines of private and public morality. Having lost our understanding of the nature of this subject, we can no longer find rational arguments to justify and sustain our different educational and religious institutions and the principles that sustain us in our common convictions about our common good. The existence of these institutions essentially depends upon, and can only be rationally justified by, philosophical arguments that presuppose that we are rational animals. Having lost this conviction, we have lost our ability to think philosophically. Thus, we can no longer rationally justify American culture.

Transmission of the principles that justify a culture's vision of the common good is the work of theologians and philosophers. American culture is theologically pluralistic. For this reason alone, it can never theologically justify a unified vision of the democratic common good to its own people, much less to people of different theological traditions who would attack America externally.

Since its inception, America has attempted to use a lowest common biblical tradition as a kind of public philosophy to justify the intellectual and moral norms that sustain our common democratic vision. Given the common Judeo-Christian and European tradition of previous generations of Americans, rhetorical appeal to such a common theological tradition was possible to sustain our way of life. Growing American pluralism and secularization no longer make this possible. Having weakened our


theological traditions, we largely only have sophistry, empty slogans, to justify our cultural, educational, and political institutions. No democracy can rationally sustain itself on sophistic principles. For this reason, our schools have lost their ability to teach, our universities are gradually being transformed into propaganda institutes, and our politicians increasingly think that words mean whatever they want them to mean.

Philosophy is not a lowest common theology, a secular religion from which we get our public morality, or any specific system or body of knowledge. It is a method of rational investigation that involves use of sense observation, abstract conceptualization, and logical reasoning, a natural mode of higher level inquiry employed by human beings, rational animals. This understanding of human nature and philosophy is common to our Western theological traditions and to ordinary human beings in all parts of the world. And it was the general understanding that prevailed in the West when universities first arose during the Middle Ages.

Some Immediate Steps to Take

Universities are the main source from which America draws its institutional leaders. If America's universities are intellectually and morally weak, American institutions will not long remain intellectually and morally strong. America's universities are intellectually and morally weak. Hence, American institutions cannot long remain intellectually and morally strong.

Currently, philosophy is required at perhaps, no more than twenty-five percent of American colleges and univer sities. Even at those schools that require philosophy, what passes for philosophy is often sophistry, having little resemblance to the mode of abstract reasoning that the ancient Greeks considered to be natural to rational animals. The decline of classical philosophy at our universities helps explain the widespread inability of contemporary American college students to think abstractly, reason logically, maintain their attention span, distinguish sound from fallacious arguments, and read difficult books.

A morally vicious and intellectually gullible citizenry cannot sustain democratic government. Loss of our ability to reason well corrupts our democratic institutions, places them in the hands of sophists, and makes us dupes to the persuasive force of ideological slogans and sound bites. We cannot turn to contemporary social scientists, psychologists, political and cultural theorists, literary critics, or contemporary philosophers to remedy our current educational, cultural, and political problems. Generally, their theories are the sophistry that lie at the source of our decay. To seek help from them resembles asking incendiaries to fight a forest fire.8

To renew our nation, we must renew our institutions. To renew our institutions, we must renew our universities. To renew our universities, we need a renaissance of classical philosophical and theological education, from the ground up as well as from the top down. The huge and growing "homeschooling" movement presents an opportunity to initiate this classical philosophical and theological educational renaissance, starting in the elementary and secondary levels and then reaching into the colleges and universities.

Homeschoolers heavily favor those colleges where classical philosophical and theological education still exists (for example, the student body of Thomas Aquinas College is now about 30% homeschooled). These colleges, especially those with a component of traditional theology, are rapidly expanding. Homeschooling is increasing at a rate of approximately 15% per year. Already, competition for these students is exerting tremendous pressure on college administrations to hire faculty and alter their curricula in that direction. This trend will doubtlessly increase.

Many universities, which previously shunned homeschoolers, now actively recruit them. New colleges geared toward homeschoolers and their traditional and classical yearnings are already on the drawing boards (for example, Patrick Henry College, The Great Books University College, Yorktown University). We need to encourage this trend.

Western culture and theological traditions inherited their philosophical principles from the ancient Greek conviction that the world is intelligible to unaided natural reason and that the highest form of human education lies in becoming an independent learner. The Delphic oracle's prescription to "know thyself" captures the motivating principle behind the ancient Greek pursuit of philosophy. As Socrates well understood, principally and primarily, all learning is self-teaching.

To become highly educated, we must facilitate this self-teaching through apprenticeship with great discoverers (of being, truth, unity, goodness, and beauty) and tutoring from masters of the liberal arts of learning: those people who can challenge us to develop the discipline whereby we can acquire the principles for reading great books. In this way, we can enter into conversation with the great discoverers, most of whom are long dead. Hopefully, through life-long conversation with these great intellects, we can ourselves become independent learners and great discoverers, and can pass on to posterity the principles that sustain our culture, those discovered and taught by the great discoverers and teachers of the past and set down in their great books, including Scriptural texts.

Unhappily, public, and most private, education in the United States today inverts the classical order of learning. Our public and private educational systems have lost the Greek understanding that the first and most essential teacher is the student, next comes the great discoverer, and last comes the classroom teacher, whose main task should be to help students learn the liberal art of reading difficult classic books. It should not be to masquerade as a great discoverer oneself. As Mortimer J. Adler is fond of saying, "A classroom teacher is only a better student."

Homeschooling, as most homeschooled students soon discover, is, after the first few years of coaching in the liberal arts (which are best taught one-on-one � hence at home), very largely self-teaching. If we equate self-teaching with the current practical expression of that concept, homeschooling, we can see that the ancient Greeks well understood what our culture is being forced to concede reluctantly: all learning is essentially self-teaching. The superior academic performance of homeschoolers, now widely known and admitted, provides objective evidence of this fact. We best encourage and support self-teaching by preparing students for, and guiding them to, the classic works of the great discoverers, at home, close to the loving arms of parents, who are more likely to be able to give them the one-to-one tutoring attention that professional educators constantly tell us is essential to maximizing student achievement.

Genuine higher education (in the sense of developing the higher intellectual virtues such as understanding and wisdom, and not just the memory) begins when we start to take control over our self-teaching, when we no longer need an auxiliary teacher's help to discover the principles by which to learn. Contemporary public and private educational systems largely invert and undermine this classical view of learning and higher education. While they often give lip-service to developing independent learners, and one-to-one tutoring, the educational practices they employ actually do the opposite: cripple the ability of students to think abstractly and become self-teachers.

Our educational institutions have largely abolished the Socratic method of using discussions and disputations among student-learners to encourage abstract thinking and deepen understanding of difficult and lofty concepts, traditionally called the "Great Ideas." Thus, secondary educational institutions neglect the one area that might be especially helpful to us for promoting abstract thought, higher education, and independent learning. More than any other institutions, our contemporary public and private educational systems sustain and propagate the sophistic educational mindset that has undermined the Greek educational vision that, for centuries, has supported Western culture and our democratic republic. To overturn this mindset, we must restore the classical view that learning is chiefly accomplished by homeschooling (that is, self-teaching) with the help of the great discoverers.

At this juncture in American history, homeschooling (especially classical homeschooling, leading to the study of Western civilization's great books), and efforts to develop ways to support the secondary liberal education of homeschoolers (including the organization of Socratic discussion groups) is one of our best hopes to halt our culture's decline. These homeschoolers now stream into our universities. Soon they will flood them. In my opinion, this is the irrepressible wave of the future. This Homeschool Renaissance may well be the West's last, large-scale, educational reform movement, and so our nation's best practical hope to halt what others have called this twilight of civilization from fading into another Dark Age of ignorance and chaos.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes, Redpath
1. "A Nation at Risk," in Policy Review, 90 (July/August 1998) 23-24.
2. Mortimer J. Adler noted this problem as far back as 1940. See Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Art of Getting a Liberal Education, New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1940) 11.
3. Peter A. Redpath, "What's Wrong with Government Schools?", in Social Justice Review 89 (November/December, 1998) no. 11-12, 164. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 91, a.4, respondeo. See, also, Plato, Republic, Bk. 1, 334C-354B, and Gorgias, 491D-500D.
4. Redpath, "What's Wrong with Government Schools?", 164.
5. Ibid.
6. Peter A. Redpath, "Private Morality and Public Enforcement," in Curtis L. Hancock and Anthony O. Simon, eds., Freedom, Virtue, and the Common Good (Notre Dame, Ind.: American Maritain Association, distributed by University of Notre Dame Press, 1995) pgs. 332-341.
7. Etienne Gilson, The Unity of Philosophical Experience (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1965) 272-293. Peter A. Redpath, "The New World Disorder: A Crisis of Philosophical Identity," in Contemporary Philosophy, 16 (November/December 1994) no. 6, 19-24.
8. Peter A. Redpath, "Dirty Dancing: Higher Education as Enlightened Swindling," in Peter A. Redpath, Masquerade of the Dream Walkers: Prophetic Theology from the Cartesians to Hegel (Amsterdam andAtlanta: Editions Rodopi, B.V., 1998). I thank Curtis L. Hancock for calling

Masonerka żydowska Bn Br usuwa nasz krzyż ze Żwirowiska

Masonerka żydowska Bn Br usuwa nasz krzyż ze Żwirowiska

O możliwości przeniesienia papieskiego krzyża, stojącego na Żwirowisku, nieopodal byłego obozu koncentracyjnego Auschwitz w Oświęcimiu donosi belgijski dziennik "La Libre Belgique".

żródło KAI (rk /a.)

http://ekai.pl/serwis/?MID=16854

-----------------------

Dziś po 10 latach organizacje żydowskie znowu atakują Polaków w imię tzw. "dialogu"
Nakazy jak poprzednio tak i tym razem przyszły z Belgii od organizacji "Sauvegarde d`Auschwitz"
i szefa organizacji żydowskich Lazarda Pereza.

Judajczykowie znowu atakują chrześcijan, chcą usunąć nasz krzyż,
a ofiarami masowych mordów w Oświęcimiu uczynić tylko Żydów.

Do takich celów powołanych zostało wiele organizacji,
stawiających sobie za cel wynarodowienie Polaków, zniszczenie tradycji chrześcijańskich,
zapłatę gigantycznego i nienależnego haraczu oraz budowę "Judeopolonii" na terenie Polski.

Warto wiedzieć, że 9 września 2007 w Polsce reaktywowaną masońską lożę B'nai B'rith
czyli Zakon Synów Przymierza.

Siedziba B'nai B'rith mieści się w Warszawie.

----------- linki ----------

Krzyż na Żwirowisku:

http://www.naszawitryna.pl/krzyze_aus...
http://www.naszawitryna.pl/krzyze_aus...
http://www.naszawitryna.pl/krzyze_aus...

Prasa:

http://www2.rp.pl/artykul/223068_Wrac...
http://wiadomosci.onet.pl/1867334,11,1,1,,item.html

Masonerka żydowska, B'nai B'rith - Synowie Przymierza
reaktywacja 30.9.2007:

http://www.bnaibritheurope.org/bbe/co...,com_rsgallery2/Itemid,134/catid,13/limit,16/limitstart,0/lang,en_GB/

http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.org/...
https://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute...
http://www.bnaibrith.org/

------------

cele masonerii:

CZESC 1 PART 1
http://www.kki.pl/piojar/polemiki/nov...


CZESC 2 PART 2

1U Rackable Systems Server Dual Intel Xeon 2.66Ghz 4GIG RAM 1X500GB IDE new parts Promo from RAQport.com $559.00 Sun Cobalt RAQ Qube Server Replaceme

1U Rackable Systems Server Dual Intel Xeon 2.66Ghz 4GIG RAM 1X500GB IDE new parts Promo from RAQport.com $559.00 Sun Cobalt RAQ Qube Server Replacement 2009 best Web Hosting Server

We can ship worldwide from Arlington Virginia office or you can purchase and colo with RAQport fiber Connection data Center Fast Bandwith static IP's for $89.00 per month.






1U Rackable Systems Server Dual Intel Xeon 2.66Ghz 4GIG RAM 1X500GB IDE new parts Promo from RAQport.com $559.00 Cobalt RAQ Qube Replacement
Rackable Servers w/centos BQ

or copy and paste entire URL

http://www.raqport.com/store/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=R&Category_Code=rackable











1U Rackable Systems Server Dual Intel Xeon 2.66Ghz 4GIG RAM 1X500GB IDE Refurbished with new parts Promo from RAQport.com $599.00

w/ latest Centos BluQuartz 4.8 or Blueonyx

discount for several units call or email

Specs:
-Dual Intel Xeon 2.66Ghz Processors
-Tyan S2721 Motherboard
-4GB Memory
-CD-ROM DRIVE
-Includes Rack mount ears
-Half Depth Server (15.5 inches deep)
-1U Height (1.75 inches high)

-EARS Rack mounds
-1U Height (1.75 inches high)

- 1U 15 1/2 " deeep ( you do not need back support ot rails )

same length as the Sun Cobalt RAQ550 but 10 times more processing power

- CD OS Restore included FREE SHIPPING IN US , INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING APPLY BASE ON THE LOCATION





CentOS + BlueQuartz Server Appliance is built on the community version of Redhat Enterprise Linux called Centos.
RAQport ships all the systems listed below worldwide.
This server appliance uses CentOS as operating system. As GUI interface it uses BlueQuartz, which is based on the open sourced RaQ550 Sausalito architecture from Sun Cobalt.
Sites, users, mailing lists and settings can directly be imported with the built in CMU from any Cobalt RaQ. So this is an inexpensive way to trade the aging Cobalt RaQs against much more modern hard- and software, while retaining the well known functionality and GUI interface.
A CentOS + BlueQuartz Server Appliance can do everything a RaQ550 and it does it much faster. A CentOS + BlueQuartz Server Appliance can do all including Frontpage. We do not have Chilisoft ASP at this moment ) - The serial ATA hardisks have a throughput of approximately 50 MBit/seconds and even the basic model with a 2.8GHz CPU outperforms a RaQ550 by several magnitudes.

Aside from the speed there are other compelling reasons to consider replacing existing RaQ3, RaQ4, XTR and RaQ550 with a CentOS + BlueQuartz Server Appliance

The sudden demise of the Sun Cobalt RaQ has left ISPs and hosting companies with a time bomb: hundreds of thousands of RaQ servers worldwide starting to wear out – with no viable replacement. Fortunately, Linux specialists have the answer.
Features
In short:
It is "BlueQuartz" on CentOS 5.2 and then some.

Has all BlueQuartz updates that accumulated over the last 13 months which never got released.
Has previously commercial add ons pre-installed, including ...

phpMyAdmin

Web based Email

GUI to automatically create and remove MySQL users and databases for sites.

Subdomain management

Better PHP security management on a per site basis.
New default skin for the GUI.

Working vacation messages.
Updated Dovecot and ProFTPd.

JSP support already built in with an improved GUI.

YUM updates are delivered through various mirrors right from the start.

Is still available free of charge and released under Sun modified BDS license.

Comes with PHP5 and MySQL5 preinstalled.

GUI to modify SSHd settings (root access, port, protocols)

GUI available in English, German, Danish and Japanese.

If you still need RAQ3 AND RAQ4 we have over 100 Units we we can preeload the Strongbolt Centos blueQuartz OS prices start with $79.00 OS Restore Included

Alex Lech Bajan
CEO
RAQport Inc.
2004 North Monroe Street
Arlington Virginia 22207
Washington DC Area
USA
TEL: 703-528-0114
TEL2: 703-652-0993
FAX: 703-940-8300
sms: 703-485-6619
Toll Free:1800-695-6200
EMAIL: sales@raqport.com
WEB SITE: http://raqport.com
Replacement for the SUN COBALT RAQ LINE
New Centos BluQuartz Virtualization and Cluster Web Servers

Dlaczego biedna Polska ma placic za Hitlera i Stalina teraz Zydzi chca nasze spodnie i buty zabrac.

Dlaczego biedna Polska ma placic za Hitlera i Stalina teraz Zydzi chca nasze spodnie i buty zabrac.






Chcą majątkowych przywilejów
Nasz Dziennik, 2009-06-27
Organizacje żydowskie chcą ułatwień prawnych w odzyskiwaniu dawnych majątków ofiar holokaustu

Władysław Bartoszewski reprezentuje Polskę podczas rozpoczętej w Pradze międzynarodowej konferencji "Mienie ery holokaustu". Uczestniczący w niej eksperci z różnych państw już na jej wstępie - co stanowi swoisty paradoks - sformułowali wnioski końcowe. Wynika z nich, iż Polska powinna zwrócić mienie należące przed wojną do Żydów, a jeśli jest to już niemożliwe - to wypłacić ekwiwalent pieniężny. Organizacje żydowskie domagają się również złagodzenia wymogów, jeśli chodzi o dokumentację posiadaną przez osobę składającą wniosek o zwrot majątku, co może umożliwić nadużycia. Warto przy tym podkreślić, że dotychczas nie zostało zwrócone Polakom mienie zagarnięte przez komunistyczne władze, bo wciąż nie ma ustawy reprywatyzacyjnej.

W z góry przyjętym podsumowaniu podkreślono, że "skonfiskowana własność prywatna nie została zwrócona dawnym właścicielom w krajach Europy Środkowowschodniej, ale znacjonalizowana za rządów komunistycznych". Tymczasem, na co wskazują eksperci, każde mienie - niezależnie od tego, czy polskie, czy żydowskie, czy jakiekolwiek inne - jeżeli nie miało spadkobiercy, automatycznie przechodziło na własność Skarbu Państwa.
"Jeśli skonfiskowana własność nie może być zwrócona, kraje powinny zapewnić alternatywną własność tej samej wartości albo zapewnić godziwe odszkodowanie" - napisano w dokumencie. Postuluje się w nim także powołanie specjalnych "trybunałów albo agencji ds. roszczeń", którym do wydania decyzji miałyby wystarczać "alternatywne formy dowodów". Wnioski w tej sprawie składano by przy tym drogą elektroniczną lub za pośrednictwem placówek dyplomatycznych, przy czym ani miejsce zamieszkania, ani obecne obywatelstwo składającego wniosek nie miałoby żadnego znaczenia. Sporo wniosków może spłynąć od obywateli amerykańskich żydowskiego pochodzenia, a należy w tym momencie przypomnieć, że 16 lipca 1960 roku rząd Polski podpisał z rządem Stanów Zjednoczonych układ dotyczący roszczeń majątkowych obywateli i instytucji USA od Polski za pozostawiony i ocalały w Polsce majątek. Zgodnie z art. 1 tejże umowy rząd Polski zobowiązał się zapłacić, a rząd USA przyjąć, 40 mln dolarów za całkowite uregulowanie i zaspokojenie wszystkich roszczeń obywateli USA zarówno osób fizycznych, jak i prawnych, z tytułu nacjonalizacji i innego rodzaju przejęcia przez Polskę mienia oraz praw i interesów związanych lub odnoszących się do mienia, które nastąpiło w Polsce przed dniem podpisania i wejścia tego układu w życie. Spłata tego zobowiązania przez Polskę następowała w rocznych ratach przesyłanych na konto Departamentu Stanu i została w całości spłacona i rozliczona 10 stycznia 1981 roku.
Autorzy dokumentu wnoszą również o wprowadzenie dodatkowego finansowania przez wspólnotę międzynarodową żyjących wciąż ofiar holokaustu. "W tym kontekście sugeruje się wykorzystanie, gdzie to możliwe, pozbawionej spadkobierców żydowskiej własności w Europie Wschodniej. Dochody z tej własności, po uzgodnieniu z istniejącymi gminami żydowskimi, powinny być przekazane na zabezpieczenie bytowych potrzeb tych, którzy przeżyli, oraz na cele edukacji. Jeśli nie podejmiemy działania teraz, to będzie za późno, o wiele za późno" - napisano w podsumowaniu, dodając, iż wyrazicielem woli ofiar holokaustu, "którzy nie mieli albo nie mają wybranego przez siebie rządu do reprezentowania ich", ma być Światowa Organizacja na rzecz Restytucji Mienia Żydowskiego (World Jewish Restitution Organisation) oraz inne podobne instytucje. W opinii dr. hab. Mieczysława Ryby, nie ma prawnych możliwości, aby wypłacać odszkodowania instytucjom niemającym nic wspólnego ze spadkobiercami.
- Jest to jakiś rodzaj dziwactwa prawnego, a w niczym to nie zadośćuczyni tym, którzy ponieśli jakieś ofiary z tym związane - ocenił Ryba. - Jeżeli są jacyś spadkobiercy, to na gruncie polskim mają możliwość zwrotu mienia - dodał.
Nikt nie wyliczył: ile kosztowało odbudowanie pożydowskich budynków, wysokości kredytów hipotecznych zaciąganych pod zastaw tychże budynków przez trudniącą się handlem ludność żydowską. Wyliczenie tego jest o tyle utrudnione, że wiele ksiąg wieczystych po prostu się nie zachowało.
Warto przypomnieć, iż po 1945 roku wiele osób, które przeżyły holokaust, przyjeżdżało do swoich rodzinnych miejscowości i sprzedawało mienie. Dochodziło często przy tym do oszustw: osoby, które nie były spadkobiercami, podawały się za takowe, sprzedawały nieruchomości i wyjeżdżały. Proceder ten, w który w większości przypadków zaangażowane były komunistyczne służby bezpieczeństwa, był uprawiany na szeroką skalę, co zresztą często znajdowało swój finał na sali sądowej. Z kolei mienie nieprywatne przechodziło na własność państwa komunistycznego.
Tymczasem w Izraelu jedna z tamtejszych organizacji zajmująca się restytucją mienia osób ocalałych z holokaustu wytoczyła proces sądowy drugiemu co do wielkości izraelskiemu bankowi Leumi. Zarzuca mu odmowę wydania funduszy złożonych w nim przez ofiary holokaustu. Jak poinformował w rozmowie z dziennikiem "Jerusalem Post" rzecznik prasowy grupy Meital Noy, sprawa dotyczy ponad 3,5 tys. rachunków bankowych.
Anna Wiejak
"Przedsiębiorstwo holokaust" rusza pełną parą
Nasz Dziennik, 2009-06-26
David Peleg: Polska ma zwrócić miliardy dolarów albo mienie

W Pradze rozpoczyna się dzisiaj pięciodniowa międzyrządowa konferencja "Mienie ery holokaustu". Do udziału w niej zaproszono przedstawicieli czterdziestu dziewięciu państw oraz trzydzieści organizacji pozarządowych. Przedmiotem rozmów będzie restytucja mienia żydowskiego: komunalnego, religijnego oraz prywatnego, w tym także dzieł sztuki oraz dóbr kultury, do czego przedstawiciele społeczności żydowskiej będą starali się nakłonić przede wszystkim państwa Europy Środkowowschodniej.

Mienie, które nie ma spadkobierców, miałoby trafić do organizacji żydowskich. Z tej okazji 25 amerykańskich kongresmenów wystosowało list do władz Polski i Litwy. Polskie Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych dotychczas nie odpowiedziało na pytanie "Naszego Dziennika" o ewentualną reakcję strony polskiej na to pismo.
Inicjatorem apelu jest wyznaczony przez sekretarz stanu USA na przewodniczącego amerykańskiej delegacji Robert Wexler, demokratyczny członek Izby Reprezentantów oraz Komisji Spraw Zagranicznych. "Jest moim celem, aby w trakcie konferencji być jak najskuteczniejszym adwokatem ocalonych z holokaustu" - napisał w specjalnie wydanym oświadczeniu Wexler.
Izraelski dziennik "Haaretz" informuje, że już na trzy tygodnie przed międzynarodową konferencją w Pradze strona żydowska prowadziła rozmowy, czy kraje takie jak Polska i Ukraina powinny zwrócić "nieposiadającą spadkobierców własność, która należała do zamordowanych Żydów". "Podczas gdy te kraje sprzeciwiają się restytucji własności, która nie posiada spadkobierców, żydowscy przedstawiciele Konferencji 'Mienie ery holokaustu' rozpoczynającej się 26 czerwca w Pradze oświadczyli, że mienie nieposiadające spadkobierców powinno trafić do organizacji żydowskich" - pisze gazeta. W rozmowie z dziennikiem "Haaretz" David Peleg, nowo wybrany dyrektor Światowej Organizacji Żydów ds. Zwrotu Mienia, oszacował wartość utraconego w Polsce majątku żydowskiego na miliardy dolarów, na których zwrot będzie naciskał. Jednocześnie strona izraelska nie zadała sobie trudu sporządzenia kosztorysu odbudowy ze środków państwowych, a zatem przez poszczególne społeczeństwa, należących przed wojną do społeczności żydowskiej budynków i innych rodzajów wkładu w odbudowę. Konsekwentnie pomija się także kwestię kosztów utrzymania ich przez ponad pół wieku.
Kwestii restytucji poświęcił obszerny artykuł "Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs" (III: 1 /2009), w którym Herbert Block, nawiązując do tematu konferencji, żali się, iż żydowska własność znajduje się w złej kondycji z powodu zaniedbania jej przez lokalne władze. Zdaniem Blacka, do 2008 r. zwrócono łącznie 16 proc. żydowskiego mienia. Zauważa, że stosowne ustawy w tej materii nie zostały uchwalone na Litwie, Łotwie, w Bośni, Słowenii, Rosji, Białorusi i Mołdawii. "Najbardziej oporna, jeśli chodzi o rozmowy na temat restytucji, jest Litwa" - stwierdza Block.
- Zaoferowane przez Litwę odszkodowania za nieruchomości żydowskie przejęte podczas okupacji hitlerowskiej i sowieckiej są zbyt małe i następują zbyt późno - ocenił przedstawiciel Komitetu Żydów Amerykańskich (AJC) Andrew Baker po wczorajszym spotkaniu w Wilnie z premierem Litwy Andriusem Kubiliusem. W poniedziałek rząd w Wilnie zadecydował, że z powodu kryzysu gospodarczego w kraju odszkodowania, rozłożone na dziesięć lat, ruszą w roku 2012. Przyjęty w marcu projekt, który jeszcze ma być zaaprobowany przez parlament, przewiduje wypłacenie odszkodowań o wysokości 113 mln litów (33 mln euro) za sporne mienie, co według oceny rządu stanowi jedną trzecią jego wartości.
Zastanawiające, że ani amerykański Kongres (warto przypomnieć, że w Departamencie Stanu USA znajduje się specjalna komórka ds. zwrotu żydowskiego mienia; zaangażowane są w to także amerykańskie przedstawicielstwa dyplomatyczne.), ani środowiska żydowskie zwrotu mienia nie domagają się tak aktywnie od strony rosyjskiej, za to usiłują wymusić restytucję i odszkodowania na znajdujących się pod sowiecką okupacją Polakach i Litwinach.
Autorem sformułowania "przedsiębiorstwo holokaust" jest amerykański naukowiec żydowskiego pochodzenia Norman Finkelstein, który w jednej ze swych książek dowodzi, że żydowskie organizacje nauczyły się czerpać wymierne korzyści z odwoływania się do holokaustu.
Anna Wiejak
Chomsky on Dershowitz' "jihad" against Finkelstein Part 1

ZBRODNIE (ŻYDO)KOMUNISTÓW- "Rabin kontra prof. Nowak" 1/2

Zbrodnie (ŻYDO)KOMUNISTÓW- "Rabin kontra prof. Nowak" 2/2

Profesor Wolniewicz + Profesor Nowak w TV TRWAM


Holocaust assets conference opens in Prague
By KAREL JANICEK – 20 hours ago

PRAGUE (AP) — Holocaust survivors, Jewish groups and experts gathered in Prague on Friday to assess efforts to return property and possessions stolen by the Nazis to their rightful owners or heirs.

The five-day conference, which brings together delegates from 49 countries, is a follow-up to a 1998 meeting in Washington that led to agreements on recovering art looted by the Nazis.

Stuart Eizenstat, head of the U.S. delegation, called it the most ambitious international meeting ever on the recovery of such stolen possessions or compensation for their loss.

One goal is to produce international guidelines on this, but they would not be compulsory for the governments involved.

"There's no political will to have a binding treaty," Eizenstat acknowledged.

But he said the voluntary principles that were approved in Washington are having an impact. "We have hundreds of pieces of art that have been returned," he said.

During the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler and his followers killed 6 million Jews and seized billions of dollars of gold, art and private and communal property across Europe. But while countries such as Austria have stepped up restitution in recent years, critics claim some Central and Eastern European states still have a long way to go.

"Many governments in Central and Eastern Europe have not found a way to implement a process to resolve outstanding real property issues that is both consistent with national law and incorporates basic principles such as nondiscriminatory treatment of non-citizens and a simple, expeditious claims and restitution process," said conference delegate Christian Kennedy, the U.S. Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues.

Kennedy said the U.S. wants the meeting "to provide an impetus for an expansion in social welfare benefits to survivors and lay the framework for further real property compensation."

The Czech Republic, host of this week's meeting, and other countries, have come under fire for legal hurdles and a lack of political will that critics claim make property restitution in some cases practically impossible.

For example, attempts by Maria Altmann of California to reclaim a castle north of Prague that once belonged to her uncle, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, proved futile since she is not a Czech citizen.

"As far as I know, there is no legal method for obtaining any recovery there at this time," Altmann's lawyer, Randol Schoenberg, said in an e-mail. Altmann had waged — and won — a seven-year legal battle in neighboring Austria for the return of five paintings by Gustav Klimt.

Efforts by the daughter of wealthy Jewish banker Jiri Popper to recover a building he once owned in Prague also have stalled.

Czechoslovak President Edvard Benes gave the building, which currently houses the Russian Embassy, to the Soviet Union in 1945. Last year, Popper's daughter filed lawsuits against both the Czech Republic and Russia demanding restitution, but no trial date has been set because Czech authorities said they have failed so far to formally inform Moscow about it, said Irena Benesova, the family's lawyer.

While the Justice Ministry declined to comment on the matter, Russian Embassy spokesman Alexandr Pismenny said Moscow was the "honest owner."

Both Schoenberg and Benesova wanted to make their case at the conference but were turned away by organizers who said they did not want discussion of individual cases. The Holocaust Survivors' Foundation claims that others also have not been allowed to have their say in setting the agenda for the conference.

In a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dated June 19, the group expressed concern about "the lack of survivor involvement on the planning, priority setting and policy making roles in the conference."

Still, the Czech Republic does appear to be taking some steps in the right direction.

A government fund created nine years ago with 300 million koruna (US$15.9 million) has paid out 100 million koruna (US$5.3 million) to 516 out of 1,256 requests from 27 countries. The requests came from people whose restitution claims did not meet the criteria set by law.

The country also has set up the Documentation Center of Property Transfers of Cultural Assets of WWII Victims, an institution that identifies artwork and other items in Czech collections and museums that were seized from Jews during the Nazi occupation.

According to Director Helena Krejcova, some 7,000 paintings and other works of art that originally belonged to Czech Jews have been found, and another more than 1,000 stolen pieces are believed to be abroad.

"There's still a lot of work ahead of us," Krejcova said, adding that sometimes efforts to restitute items are stymied by a lack of cooperation from other states and a change to that is nowhere in sight.

Case in point: Czech authorities have been waiting five years for a reply from Russia after Krejcova's team traced a valuable collection of 500 porcelain pieces once owned by Holocaust victim Hans Meyer to St. Petersburg.

On the Net:
Holocaust Era Assets Conference: http://www.holocausteraassets.eu
Roszczenia względem Polski w sprawie mienia żydowskiego- cz1

Roszczenia względem Polski w sprawie mienia żydowskiego- cz2

The Warsaw Ghetto 1943 Gaza Palestine 2009 Children found themselves in the firing line

The Warsaw Ghetto 1943 Gaza Palestine 2009 Children found themselves in the firing line





The Warsaw Ghetto 1943 Gaza Palestine 2009 Children found themselves in the firing line


9 January 2009: Children make up more than half of Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants, and as such have found themselves in the firing line since Israel began its offensive against Hamas. Using unprecedented force, the Israeli army has launched raid after raid against the tiny, overcrowded territory, with the inevitable consequence that children have figured heavily among the casualty numbers. According to UN figures, more than 250 children have been killed and 1,080 wounded — about a third of the total casualties — since the offensive began on December 27. Here we look at the impact of the conflict on Palestinian children





warsaw getho

アンジェイ・ワイダ：「カチンの森」 Wajda Katyn in Japan

アンジェイ・ワイダ：「カチンの森」 Wajda Katyn in Japan
「カタロニア賛歌」とアンジェイ・ワイダ http://ima-ikiteiruhushigi.... Film re-opens Katyn wound (VIDEO 2:45) http://news.bbc.co.uk/playe... Film reopens Poland's Katyn wound http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/... 映画｢カチン｣公式サイ...
「カタロニア賛歌」とアンジェイ・ワイダ
http://ima-ikiteiruhushigi.cocolog-ni...
Film re-opens Katyn wound (VIDEO 2:45)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/news...
Film reopens Poland's Katyn wound
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/702...
映画｢カチン｣公式サイト：Katyń - film Andrzeja Wajdy
http://www.postmortem.netino.pl/
アンジェイ・ワイダ　祖国ポーランドを撮り続けた男
http://www.veoh.com/videos/v142220982...





The last sceen with the traditional Polish dance.


The good Lord God gave the director two eyes - one to look into the camera, the other to be alert to everything that is going on around him.
Andrzej Wajda
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I will speak in Polish because I want to say what I think and feel and I always thought and felt in Polish.

I accept this greeat honor not as a personal tribute, but as a tribute to all of Polish cinema.

The subject of many of our films was the war, the atrocities of Nazism and the tragedies brought by communism.

This is why today I thank the American friends of Poland and my compatriots for helping my country rejoin the family of democratic nations, rejoin the Western civilizations, its institutions and security structures.

My fervent hope is that the only flames people will encounter will be the great passions of the heart--love, gratitude and solidarity.

On April 2, 2000, Andrzej Wajda donated his Oscar statuette to the Muzeum of Jagiellonian University in Cracow. The statuette will be exposed together with earlier Wajda's gifts: La Palme d'Or from Cannes and Golden Lion from Venice.

Andrzej Wajda - biography
WAJDA, Andrzej ; Polish film and theatrical director; born March 6th 1926 in Suwalki; son of Jakub Wajda and Aniela Wajda;

ed. Acadademy of Fine Arts,Cracow; High Film School, Lodz;

Film Director 1954 - ; Theatre Director Teatr Stary ,Cracow 1962 - 1998.

Man.Director Teatr Powszechny Warsaw 1989-90;

Hon.member Union Polish Artist and Designers (ZPAP)1977.
Pres.Polish Film Asscn.1978-83 . "Solidarity" Lech Walesa Council 1981 - 1989.
Senator of the Republic of Poland 1989 - 1991.

Member Presidential Council for Culture 1992- 94.

Founder: Center of Japanese Art and Technology, Cracow 1994.

Prizes: click here

Order of the Banner of Labor (second class)1975;
Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta;
Order of Kirill and Methodus (first class), Bulgaria 1978;
Oficier, Legion d'Honneur 1982;
Order of Rising Sun, Japan 1995.

Films: click here

Polish Television Theatre: click here

Theatre: click here



The Birthplace
My family comes from the village of Szarow. Not far away, several miles from Szarow, in the Brzeziow graveyard, lies my granfather, Kazimierz Wayda, still spelt with a "y". These country origins seem essential to me, since from this tiny village, from this place and this family came four young men, all of which became educated people, members of the intelligentsia. One of them was my father, so I am only second generation intelligentsia myself. I think that there was a kind of strength in these young men, who left everything behind because they believed that all their future is before them. At the age of 16 my father joined the Legions (a Polish liberation corps in the I World War), where he became an officer. The second brother found employment as a railway official and until the outbreak of the Second World War he held the post of a director in the Krakow Railways. The third set up a large locksmith's shop, where I worked during the German occupation; the youngest brother, who was a promising farmers' activist, died prematurely.

I think that the force that drove these boys to run away, to avoid staying in one place because life was somewhere else... that I am also driven in this way... I have never wanted to live in places where I was thrown by chance, instead I strove for places which - it seemed to me - I should reach.

So after the war ended I travelled to Krakow, because I thought that my destiny lies at the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts. Then I went to Lodz, because of the foundation of the Film School - the only one in existence at the time - where I thought my place was. Then I left Lodz for Warsaw, because it was where all the filmmaking decisions were made and, besides, a person simply ought to live in Warsaw. And then I returned to Krakow once more, because the Stary Theatre was here. It always seemed to me that life wasn't here and now, not in this place where I was living, not in this film I was making - although every single one of my films and theatre productions was made with the conviction that it is meaningful and important. But I always thought that there is something more before me, that I should be running, striving, chasing this something... it is very difficult to define. I think that escape is the most important theme of my life, continually linking my past to the things that will happen tomorrow. I think that the energy which drove my father and his brothers, was exactly the same energy which I sense in myself, the energy which, so to speak, forced me to work so intensively and to run so hard from this pastoral landscape. Perhaps I should have spent my life looking at these mountains and doing nothing else...

An excerpt of a speech from the film "The Debit and the Credit"




The War and Occupation
After the death in 1903 of their father, Kazimierz Wayda, all his sons (my father was 3 at the time) moved to Krakow and helped each other get an education. They were in Krakow again in the 30's, when they restored the house, their only piece of property. At the back of the house was the locksmith's shop; in this house, on the second floor, I used to hide during the occupation. And I must say that my uncles were so discreet (I think that this is a virtue of our family) that only after the end of the war I found out that in the same house they also concealed Jews.

So, thanks to my father's brothers, I was able to survive the occupation; I probably owe them my life, because my papers (documents) were very insufficient. I had to stay at home, I was scared even to go to the tram stop, because there was always some kind of control going on. Of course, it might seem that all I did here was just hide out with my family, but my uncles were extremely serious about all of this. There were several people employed here, we all had normal, everyday tasks, from which I returned late in the evening. If I still had any strength left I climbed out on this balcony, and here I painted some landscapes of the Salwator district. Sitting somewhere near the house I also painted this stream, and this was practically all I managed to do besides the hard work in my uncles' workshop, where I had to go every day.

This work later helped me understand what physical labour really means, what it means to work every day, to go to work in the morning, and when later, in the 50's, there was talk about the workers, the working class, I could say to myself "I have also been a worker". It was not strange to me.

An excerpt from a speech from the film "The Debit and the Credit"




Parents
My father was an officer, a junior lieutenant in the Polish Army. My mother was a teacher; she graduated from a teaching college and worked at a Ukrainian school. So they were a typical intelligentsia marriage. My father was promoted very quickly and he was moved to Suwalki, to the 41st Infantry Regiment garrison. And that's where I was born. Officers were constantly transferred from one garrison to another, so my father soon moved to Radom.

Professions such as a teacher or a military officer are directed towards other people. A teacher teaches children, an officer also educates, in a sense, disciplining the soldiers in his care. So both are people who work for others, not only for themselves. I think this quality was very distinct among the Polish intelligentsia in those times and I didn't know that a person could behave otherwise. You live for others, not for yourself.

And suddenly, in 1939, everything collapsed. My father was lost; he went to war and never came back. My mother could not stay at home, she had to go to work, we became workers. Our intelligentsia family found itself in completely different surroundings. I was 13 when the war broke out, so the only things I retained were the things that my home, school and the church had given me until that age.

My father, Jakub Wajda, lived only to the age of 40. He was captain in the 72nd Infantry Regiment and died at Katyn. But until 1989 we were not allowed to make an inscription on the family tomb, saying where he was killed. The censorship was so strict and the ban on all information on this subject so rigorous that when I recently tried to find a copy of the newspaper, published by Germans during the war, with the list of Katyn victims, my father's name among them, it turned out that the paper simply did not exist. Some mysterious hand removed the relevant copies from the library collection, so the experience of living through perhaps the most shocking moment of my life, when I could find out from a German paper that my father had been murdered, was denied to me.

War put an end to my country life - and to my pastoral life, because all childhood seems pastoral. Because of the war I finally could and had to make my own decisions, I knew I could no longer rely on anyone, everything now depended on me and only on me.

My father considered it natural that I should go into the Army. In 1939 I went to Lwow to enroll into the Cadets' School, but unfortunately I failed. I had always tried to have something to draw, I deemed this more interesting than other occupations, but nobody knew what should come out of it. During the occupation I realized, however, that I want to do this professionally and for a few months I attended drawing lessons at an art school owned by a professor from Lodz, which the Germans still allowed at that time. But the occupation became inceasingly more brutal, further education was out of the question, the usual choice was to hide or to work in a firm which could supply good papers - that is documents, which would allow us to go out in the street and move about in a normal way.

My mother came to Krakow near the end of her life, in 1950. My brother and I were already students at the Fine Arts Academy, and she was left behind alone in Radom. Our father didn't return from the war. We still had some hope, but in 1950 we were fairly certain that he won't come back. So our mother moved in with us, to our home in the Salwator district, and when she died prematurely - she was only 50 - she was buried here, because this is the Wajda family tomb and our uncles decided that she should remain here.

An excerpt from a speech from the film "The Debit and the Credit"




The Fine Arts Academy
The Fine Arts Academy was, and still is, named after Jan Matejko. In 1945 it experienced an influx of Paris-educated professors, who painted beautifully in the French postimpressionist manner.

But we soon realized that this was a contradiction. Here we were, painting nudes, flowers and still lives in the best French spirit, but our personal experience, our world, were quite different. We had seen the occupation and all its filth, we worked in factories. My fellow students often came straight from the Army, some of them still in uniform - nobody had any clothes to speak of, so everyone wore a uniform (I also dressed in my father's uniform which I had dyed navy blue) - but they came straight from the Army, dressed in battle green, and our shared experince was inconsistent with our painting. We felt we had another story to tell, but our painting expressed what we meant very incompletely - or not at all.

Here we had seen the smoking chimneys of the crematoriums, the arrests, the street roundups, the Warsaw uprising - and they were like Cézanne, who when he was asked, What did you do when the Prussians advanced on Paris? answered, I painted some landscape studies. They, our professors, dared to paint lanscapes and still lives during the war. And it was a kind of resistance against this... against this war and all the things that the German occupation brought to Poland. But now the war had ended and we thought that we should meet painting in a different way. That's why we could not agree... Later it turned out that this conflict perfectly suited the current cultural policy of the authorities.

What was going on?

The year was 1945 and 46 - I enrolled at the Academy in 46. After the party union in 1948 there was a lot of confusion - of an ideological character, so to speak. But socrealism already started taking shape and there was demand for a kind of painting which would represent the new reality: the workers, farmers, all the things which the new policy brought. All this actually boiled down to was planned sovietization of Poland. We liked to paint these other subjects, but we never thought that we would be required merely to imitate Soviet painting. I think that at this point many people left the Academy; they understood that it's simply not possible, that this kind of art has no artistic future,

The thing that today moves me most in the Academy rooms is the smell. It has haunted me for years, this smell of the workshop, of paint... This smell is always with me, and today, when I stand in this studio, I think that this is the place where I could have been happy. But at that time I didn't have enough strength, character, willpower, tenacity. There were other, more talented people, and I was married for the first time. My wife turned out to be a fantastic painter and this also sort of put me off. I had to find another group of friends, another college, another place for myself.

I studied at the Academy for three years. By the end of the third year I realized that I was rather lost, and then, completely by chance, I read in some weekly magazine that the Film School is searching for students. So I decided to leave Krakow for Lodz.

But Lodz was no longer a school to me. I think that whatever I learned or thought or found out about art, was here, in Krakow. Regardless of all our arguments and our criticism of our professors, here we talked about art and thought in terms of art. But the Film School was a technical college - there we talked about how to make a film, how to orient ourselves in the political situation, how to show this subject or another.

But what did it all mean, and why film should be an art, these things I learned here. For a long time I kept hoping that I could paint something, because they told me that in old age you can still paint something good. I don't think this is true. To paint something in old age I should have achieved two things when I was young - I should have found my own way of painting and my own subject. And then, even if I had abandoned painting for a time and then taken it up again, I could have used this experience. But it didn't happen this way, so now I can only be a person who comes, looks and understands.

An excerpt from a speech from the film "The Debit and the Credit"




Krakow
In 1950 together with my fellow students from Lodz I went to Nowa Huta. We were making a student movie - a feature - about the construction of the first socialist city in Poland. And so I gained the opportunity to see it all. At the beginning there was nothing here, only fields, but we all believed that the country people really needed such a city, because the villages were overpopulated. The idea was to create something that would transform Krakow. Krakow voted against the communists, so obviously it was necessary to create a community which would infuse this lifeless Krakow with its ideology.

Instead we found ourselves in a lifeless city, while Krakow was alive as never before, as if through an act of historic justice. And this city, intended to be a threat to Krakow, became in fact a kind of provincial little town, seemingly hundreds of miles distant from Krakow, a town where there is nothing of interest, where nothing happens, a town which nobody cares about.

I think that this is a kind of lesson in history, that you can't violate certain things, that there are places which radiate their culture. Krakow radiated culture and that is why it could not be destroyed.

An excerpt from a speech from the film "The Debit and the Credit"




The Film School
In the 1950's the Film School was an ideological school. There were no such schools before and this one had no tradition. So it was meant to be a school for "janissaries", intended to educate a film elite, so to speak, which would later become an ideological commando and play a decisive role in the political and social transformations in Poland.

Our professors and teachers were people who before the war sympathized with the left and who just now, at the end of the war, thought that the day had come for them to play their part.

But there emerged an unforeseeable contradiction. These people, our teachers, were educated people who understood what was going on in Poland, and though they deferred to this ideology, they did not completely lose their wits. So, for example, Andrzej Munk could not make a film with a consumptive hero (I was to play that hero because I was terribly thin), he could not make it even as a student etude, because to show a victim of consumption was considered just too pessimistic. On the other hand, the majority of our post-war colleagues came out "from the forest", from the resistance movement, infected with tuberculosis. This disease at the time really took its toll among the intelligentsia, and not only intelligentsia.

But, at the same time, our rector Jerzy Toeplitz brought from Paris a whole collection of French avant-garde movies - not the Russian avant-garde, not Eisenstein, but precisely French. And so I was able to see the "Le Ballet Mécanique", "Le Chien d'Andalousie", "L'Age d'Or" and "Le Ballet Mécanique" once again, all the films which opened my eyes to a completely different kind of cinema, films which we not only never had made, but never had even seen. The inconsistency was fantastic: on the one hand our professors at the school wanted us - perhaps as a way of justification - to make all these socrealist movies, and, on the other, they brought us closer to real art.

Jerzy Toeplitz viewed our school as belonging to a greater body of European film colleges, and not as some provincial school somewhere in the Polish city of Lodz.

An excerpt from a speech from the film "The Debit and the Credit"




The 1989 Crisis
I could have been sent to Auschwitz; by a strange twist of fate it didn't happen. I could have been arrested and sent to Germany as a slave labourer. I had a little luck, but this is a country where you actually have to find excuses for your luck. Because it is also true that all those who were braver, more determined, more desperate, more eager to take up arms, are mostly dead. And it must be said that these certainly were the best people.

Now, when we have freedom, so to speak, everyone asks me: OK, but why is it that you were successful while others weren't? Why could you make films while others couldn't? And could these films be right, if they were made in a state film studio and financed with state money? How is this possible? Which means that it would be better if I had spent my life doing nothing. And indeed, these people, who did nothing, have a ready excuse.

But what did we want? We only wanted to expand a little the limits of freedom, the limits of censorship, so that films such as "Popiol i diament" could be made. We never hoped to live to see the fall of the Soviet Union, to see Poland as a free country. We thought that all we could do was to expand this limit, so that the party wouldn't rule by itself but would have to admit the voice of the society it was ruling. If you want to participate in a reality created by an alien power, enforced by a historical situation, then you always risk taking part in some ambiguous game.

I saw quite soon that it was better to remain independent, that a party artist didn't really have more options only because he was allowed to make a film, permitted to do things apparently forbidden to others - quite the opposite.

The party controlled its members even more strictly. It summoned them and said: Why? You see, you know, why do you act this way? Why don't you follow the party line? But I couldn't be spoken to in this way, for I didn't have to follow the party line. I was a filmmaker. Of course, I didn't join the party, not only because my father wouldn't have joined the party, not because my mother wouldn't have thought it right, but simply because I was beginning to have a mind of my own.

All my life I was determined to have a kind of independence. Which is very funny, because there isn't a person more dependent than a film director. He depends on the people with whom he makes the film. He depends on the people for whom he makes the film. Not only on the audience, but also on those who make the film possible. Regardless of the political system, whether it is Poland or America, France or Bulgaria, it is the same everywhere. And this dependence is incomparably stronger. But it seemed to me that this might spring from the strong character of my father, of my whole family, who roused themselves and went away from these fields. The young people who left these villages - some went only in search of bread, but others also in search of bread and success. And immortality. To really become someone and decide not only for themselves but also for others.

Andrzej Wajda - Why Japan?
During the German occupation, which I spent in Krakow, I had to hide because my papers were very unsatisfactory. I went to town just once, when I found out that at the Sukiennice Hall there is an exhibition of Japanese art. I didn't know where the collection came from and who had assembled it here, in Krakow. Japan was a German ally during the war, so the Governor-General Frank, who resided at the Wawel Castle, decided to organize an exhibition as a homage to Japan and used this collection. I took a risk and slipped into the Sukiennice and I must say it was an incredible adventure. I remember every detail to this day and I think that the Japanese Centre, standing today by the Vistula river, originated to a large degree from the extraordinary event, which was my encounter with Japanese art here, in Krakow.

Many years later, when my films became well-known and I went abroad a lot, I was also noticed in Japan where I was awarded the prestigious "Kyoto Prize", which is the Japanese equivalent of the Nobel Prize. In short, I received an enormous amount of money - 340 000 USD was a sum beyond my imagination. In all my life I had never earned as much from a Polish movie and I thought - my wife, Krystyna, was of the same opinion - that this is a good moment to consider Japan in Krakow, because this huge collection, about 15 000 various objects, works of art, should be found a place here. Arata Isosaki made a drawing, he came here earlier, and we were standing on the terrace at the Wawel Castle, and he just looked. The city propsed several locations, but in his opinion it was best to build near water, because the most beautiful buildings in the world are built on the waterside. So he selected this location and then the political situation changed suddenly. The new voyevoda was a man who supported this project - Mr. Tadeusz Piekarz, who offered this plot for our Centre. The building was constructed in 15 months. Owing to the government of Japan and to the Railwaymen Union, which also donated a large sum of money for this purpose, Japan suddenly came into existence in Krakow.



Films
1955 Pokolenie [Generation]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Bohdan Czeszko, based on his novel
Director of Photography: Jerzy Lipman
Music: Andrzej Markowski
Cast: Tadeusz Lomnicki, Urszula Modrzynska, Tadeusz Janczar, Roman Polanski, Ryszard Kotas, Janusz Paluszkiewicz, Zbigniew Cybulski

This film is available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles)



1957 Kanal
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Jerzy Stefan Stawinski, based on his novel
Director of Photography: Jerzy Lipman
Music: Jan Krenz
Cast: Wienczyslaw Glinski, Teresa Izewska, Tadeusz Janczar, Emil Karewicz, Wladyslaw Sheybal, Stanislaw Mikulski, Teresa Berezowska, Tadeusz Gwiazdowski, Adam Pawlikowski and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
This film is also available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles)



1958 Popiol i diament [Ashes And Diamonds]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Jerzy Andrzejewski, based on his novel
Director of Photography: Jerzy Wojcik

Second Director: Janusz Morgenstern
Music: Jan Krenz, Michal Kleofas Oginski
Cast: Zbigniew Cybulski, Ewa Krzyzewska, Waclaw Zastrzezynski, Adam Pawlikowski, Bogumil Kobiela

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
Jerzy Andrzejewski's book Popiol i diament is available at the Merlin bookstore
This film is also available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles)



1959 Lotna
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Wojciech Zukrowski, based on his novel
Director of Photography: Jerzy Lipman
Second Director: Janusz Morgenstern
Music: Tadeusz Baird
Cast: Jerzy Pichelski, Adam Pawlikowski, Jerzy Moes, Mieczyslaw Loza, Bozena Kurowska, Karol Rommel, Roman Polanski



1960 Niewinni czarodzieje [Innocent Sorcerers]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Jerzy Andrzejewski, Jerzy Skolimowski
Director of Photography: Krzysztof Winiewicz
Music: Krzysztof Trzcinski-Komeda
Cast: Tadeusz Lomnicki, Krystyna Stypulkowska, Wanda Koczewska, Zbigniew Cybulski, Roman Polanski, Krzysztof Trzcinski-Komeda, Kalina Jedrusik-Dygatowa and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
This film is available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles)



1961 Samson
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Kazimierz Brandys, based on his novel and Andrzej Wajda
Director of Photography: Jerzy Wojcik
Music: Tadeusz Baird
Cast: Serge Merlin, Alina Janowska, Elzbieta Kepinska, Tadeusz Bartosik, Wladyslaw Kowalski, Jan Ciecierski, Beata Tyszkiewicz, Roman Polanski and others.



1962 Sibirska Ledi Magbet [Siberian Lady Macbeth]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Sveta Lukic, based on a short story by Nikolai Leskov
Director of Photography: Aleksander Sekulovic
Music: Dusan Radic
Cast: Olivera Markowic, Ljuba Tadic, Miodrag Lazarevic, Bojan Stupica and others.

This film is available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles)



1962 L'amour à vingt ans [Love At Twenty]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Jerzy Stefan Stawinski
Director of Photography: Jerzy Lipman
Music: Jerzy Matuszkiewicz
Cast: Barbara Kwiatkowska-Lass, Zbigniew Cybulski, Wladyslaw Kowalski



1965 Popioly [Ashes]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Aleksander Scibor Rylski, based on the novel by Stefan Zeromski
Director of Photography: Jerzy Lipman
Second Director: Andrzej Zulawski
Music: Andrzej Markowski
Cast: Daniel Olbrychski, Pola Raksa, Boguslaw Kierc, Beata Tyszkiewicz, Piotr Wysocki, Jozef Duriasz, Wladyslaw Hancza, Jadwiga Andrzejewska, Stanislaw Zaczyk, Jan Swiderski, Jan Nowicki and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
Stefan Zeromski's book Popioly is available at the Merlin bookstore



1968 The Gates To Paradise
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Jerzy Andrzejewski, based on his novel
English dialogs: Donald Howard
Director of Photography: Mieczyslaw Jahoda
Music: Ward Swingle
Cast: Lionel Stander, Ferdy Mayne, Jenny Agutter, Mathieu Carrière and others.

Jerzy Andrzejewski's story Bramy raju is available at the Merlin bookstore



1968 Przekladaniec [Roly Poly]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Stanislaw Lem, based on his short story
Director of Photography: Wieslaw Zdort
Music: Andrzej Markowski
Cast: Bogumil Kobiela, Ryszard Filipski, Anna Prucnal, Jerzy Zelnik and others.



1969 Wszystko na sprzedaz [Everything For Sale]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Wajda
Director of Photography: Witold Sobocinski
Music: Andrzej Korzynski
Cast: Andrzej Lapicki, Beata Tyszkiewicz, Elzbieta Czyzewska, Daniel Olbrychski and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore



1969 Polowanie na muchy [Hunting Flies]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Janusz Glowacki, based on his story
Director of Photography: Zygmunt Samosiuk
Music:Andrzej Korzynski
Cast: Malgorzata Braunek, Zygmunt Malanowicz, Daniel Olbrychski, Ewa Skarzanka, Hannna Skarzanka and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
This film is also available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles) as Fury Is A Woman



1970 Brzezina [Birch Wood]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz, based on his short story
Director of Photography: Zygmunt Samosiuk
Music: Andrzej Korzynski
Cast: Daniel Olbrychski, Emilia Krakowska, Olgierd Lukaszewicz, Marek Perepeczko and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore



1970 Krajobraz po bitwie [Landscape After the Battle]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Brzozowski and Andrzej Wajda, based on the novel by Tadeusz Borowski
Director of Photography: Zbigniew Samosiuk
Music: Antonio Vivaldi, Fryderyk Chopin, Zygmunt Konieczny
Cast: Daniel Olbrychski, Stanislawa Celinska, Tadeusz Janczar, Mieczyslaw Stoor, Leszek Drogosz, Aleksander Bardini, Stefan Friedmann, Jerzy Zelnik, Anna German, Malgorzata Braunek and others.



1972 Pilatus und andere [Pilat And Others]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Wajda, based on the novel The Master and Margaret by Michail Bulhajov
Director of Photography: Igor Luther
Music: Jan Sebastian Bach
Cast: Wojciech Pszoniak, Jan Kreczmar, Daniel Olbrychski, Andrzej Lapicki, Marek Perepeczko, Jerzy Zelnik and others.

Michail Bulchakov's book The Master and Margaret is available at the Merlin bookstore



1973 Wesele [The Wedding]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Kijowski, based on Stanislaw Wyspianski's drama
Director of Photography: Witold Sobocinski
Music: Stanislaw Radwan
Cast: Daniel Olbrychski, Ewa Zietek, Malgorzata Lorentowicz, Barbara Wrzesinska, Andrzej Lapicki, Wojciech Pszoniak, Marek Perepeczko, Maja Komorowska, Franciszek Pieczka, Marek Walczewski, Emilia Krakowska and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
Stanislaw Wyspianski's drama Wesele is available at the Merlin bookstore



1975 Ziemia obiecana [Promised Land]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Wajda, based on Wladyslaw Reymont's novel
Director of Photography: Witold Sobocinski, Edward Klosinski, Waclaw Dybowski
Second Directors: Andrzej Kotkowski, Jerzy Domaradzki
Music: Wojciech Kilar
Cast: Daniel Olbrychski, Wojciech Pszoniak, Andrzej Seweryn, Anna Nehrebecka, Tadeusz Bialoszczynski, Franciszek Pieczka, Bozena Dykiel, Kalina Jedrusik and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
Stanislaw Reymont's Ziemia obiecana is available at the Merlin bookstore



1976 Smuga cienia [The Shadow Line]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Boleslaw Sulik, Andrzej Wajda, based on Joseph Conrad's novel
Director of Photography: Witold Sobocinski
Music: Wojciech Kilar
Cast: Marek Kondrat, Graham Lines, Tom Wilkinson, Bernard Archard and others.



1977 Czlowiek z marmuru [The Man of Marble]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Aleksander Scibor Rylski
Director of Photography: Edward Klosinski
Second Directors: Krystyna Grochowicz, Witold Holz
Music: Andrzej Korzynski
Cast: Jerzy Radziwillowicz, Krystyna Janda, Tadeusz Lomnicki, Jacek Lomnicki, Michal Tarkowski, Piotr Cieslak, Wieslaw Wojcik, Krystyna Zachwatowicz and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
This film is also available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles)



1978 Bez znieczulenia [Rough Treatment]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Agnieszka Holland i Andrzej Wajda
Cooperation: Krzysztof Zaleski
Director of Photography: Edward Klosinski
Music: Jerzy Derfel, Wojciech Mlynarski
Cast: Zbigniew Zapasiewicz, Ewa Dalkowska, Andrzej Seweryn, Krystyna Janda, Emilia Krakowska, Roman Wilhelmi, Kazimierz Kaczor and others.

This film is available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles) as Without Anesthesia



1979 Panny z Wilka [The Maids from Wilko]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Zbigniew Kaminski, based on a short story by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz
Director of Photography: Edward Klosinski
Music: Karol Szymanowski
Cast: Daniel Olbrychski, Anna Seniuk, Maja Komorowska, Stanislawa Celinska, Krystyna Zachwatowicz, Christine Pascal, Zbigniew Zapasiewicz and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz's story Panny z Wilka is available at the Merlin bookstore



1980 Dyrygent [The Orchestra Conductor]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Kijowski
Director of Photography: Slawomir Idziak
Music: Ludwig van Beethoven
Cast: John Gielgud, Krystyna Janda, Andrzej Seweryn, Jan Ciecierski, Marysia Seweryn and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
This film is available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles)



1981 Czlowiek z zelaza [The Iron Man]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Aleksander Scibor-Rylski
Director of Photography: Edward Klosinski
Music: Andrzej Korzynski
Cast: Jerzy Radziwillowicz, Krystyna Janda, Marian Opania, Andrzej Seweryn, Irena Byrska and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
This film is also available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles)



1983 Danton
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Jean-Claude Carrière, based on Stanislawa Przybyszewska's play Danton's Affair
Cooperation: Andrzej Wajda, Agnieszka Holland, Boleslaw Michalek, Jacek Gasiorowski
Director of Photography: Igor Luther
Music: Jean Prodromides
Cast: Gérard Depardieu, Wojciech Pszoniak, Anne Alvaro, Roland Blanche, Patrice Chéreau, Emmanuelle Debever, Krzysztof Globisz, Tadeusz Huk, Marek Kondrat, Boguslaw Linda and others.



1983 Eine Liebe in Deutschland [Love In Germany]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Boleslaw Michalek, Agnieszka Holland, Andrzej Wajda, based on Rolf Hochhuth's novel
Director of Photography: Igor Luther
Decoration: Allan Starski
Music: Michel Legrand
Cast: Hanna Schygulla, Marie-Christine Barrault, Piotr Lysak, Daniel Olbrychski and others.



1986 Kronika wypadkow milosnych [A Chronicle of Amorous Incidents]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Wajda, based on Tadeusz Konwicki's novel
Director of Photography: Edward Klosinski
Music: Wojciech Kilar
Cast: Paulina Mlynarska, Piotr Wawrzynczak, Bernadetta Machala, Dariusz Dobkowski, Tadeusz Konwicki, Jaroslaw Gruda, Tadeusz Lomnicki, Krystyna Zachwatowicz and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore



1988 Les Possédes [The possessed]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Jean-Claude Carrière, based on a novel by Dostojevsky
Cooperation: Andrzej Wajda, Agnieszka Holland, Edward Zebrowski
Director of Photography: Witold Adamek
Decoration: Allan Starski
Music: Zygmunt Konieczny
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Jutta Lampe, Philippine Leroy Beaulieu, Bernard Blier, Jean-Philippe Ecoffey, Laurent Malet, Jerzy Radziwillowicz, Omar Sharif and others.

Fiodor Dostojevsky's novel Bracia Karamazow is available at the Merlin bookstore



1990 Korczak
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Agnieszka Holland
Director of Photography: Robby Müller
Decoration: Allan Starski
Music: Wojciech Kilar
Cast: Wojciech Pszoniak, Ewa Dalkowska, Teresa Budzisz-Krzyzanowska, Marzena Trybala, Piotr Kozlowski, Zbigniew Zamachowski, Jan Peszek, Aleksander Bardini, Wojciech Klata, Krystyna Zachwatowicz and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
This film is also available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles)



1992 Pierscionek z orlem w koronie [The Crowned-Eagle Ring]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Wajda, Maciej Karpinski, Andrzej Kotkowski, based on a novel by Aleksander Scibor-Rylski Pierscionek z konskiego wlosia (the Horsehair Ring).
Director of Photography: Dariusz Kuc
Decoration: Allan Starski
Music: Zbigniew Gorny
Cast: Rafal Krolikowski, Agnieszka Wagner, Adrianna Biedrzynska, Maria Chwalibog, Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieslak, Cezary Pazura, Miroslaw Baka, Piotr Bajor, Jerzy Trela and others.



1994 Nastasja
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Wajda, Maciej Karpinski, based on The Idiot by Dostojevsky
Japan translation: Masao Yonekawa
Director of Photography: Pawel Edelman
Decoration and costumes: Krystyna Zachwatowicz
Cast: Tamasaburo Bando, Toshiyuki Nagashima

Fiodor Dostojevsky's book Idiota is available at the Merlin bookstore



1995 Wielki Tydzien [Holy Week]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Wajda, based on Jerzy Andrzejewski's short story
Director of Photography: Wit Dabal
Decoration: Allan Starski
Music: G.F. Narholz, F. Ullmann, S. Burston, O. Siebien, R. Baumgartner, J. Clero, V. Borek
Cast: Beata Fudalej, Wojciech Malajkat, Wojciech Pszoniak, Magdalena Warzecha, Jakub Przebindowski, Cezary Pazura, Maria Seweryn and others.



1996 Panna Nikt [Miss Nothing]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Radoslaw Piwowarski, based on a Tomek Tryzna's novel
Director of Photography: Krzysztof Ptak
Cast: Anna Wielgucka, Anna Mucha, Anna Powierza, Stanislawa Celinska, Janga Jan Tomaszewski and others.

Tomek Tryzna's novel Panna Nikt is available at the Merlin bookstore



1998 Pan Tadeusz
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Wajda, Jan Nowina-Zarzycki, Piotr Weresniak, based on a poem by Adam Mickiewicz
Second Director: Adek Drabinski
Director of Photography: Pawel Edelman
Music: Wojciech Kilar
Cast: Michal Zebrowski, Alicja Bachleda-Curus, Boguslaw Linda, Daniel Olbrychski, Grazyna Szapolowska, Andrzej Seweryn, Marek Kondrat,
Krzysztof Kolberger, Siergiej Szakurow, Jerzy Binczycki and others.
The story is very personal. Mr. Wajda's father was one of the victims of Katyn, and Mr. Wajda based the story on the women who waited in vain for their men to return, just like his own mother had done.

Although many VIPs and the "gliteratti" were present at the showing of the film in the Polish National Opera, the mood was somber, and at the end of the film, the silence was truly pregnant with emotion. I could not see him, but I believe Cardinal Jozef Glemp said a prayer at the very end.

Also at the end of the movie a German lady said to me how lucky I was to be an American. Indeed. The burden of history is huge. These are atrocities that we can never, ever forget.

Go here to read about President Kaczynski's visit to Katyn yesterday, as well as to see some beautiful photos of the victims of the massacre.
The good Lord God gave the director two eyes - one to look into the camera, the other to be alert to everything that is going on around him.
Andrzej Wajda
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I will speak in Polish because I want to say what I think and feel and I always thought and felt in Polish.

I accept this greeat honor not as a personal tribute, but as a tribute to all of Polish cinema.

The subject of many of our films was the war, the atrocities of Nazism and the tragedies brought by communism.

This is why today I thank the American friends of Poland and my compatriots for helping my country rejoin the family of democratic nations, rejoin the Western civilizations, its institutions and security structures.

My fervent hope is that the only flames people will encounter will be the great passions of the heart--love, gratitude and solidarity.

On April 2, 2000, Andrzej Wajda donated his Oscar statuette to the Muzeum of Jagiellonian University in Cracow. The statuette will be exposed together with earlier Wajda's gifts: La Palme d'Or from Cannes and Golden Lion from Venice.

Andrzej Wajda - biography
WAJDA, Andrzej ; Polish film and theatrical director; born March 6th 1926 in Suwalki; son of Jakub Wajda and Aniela Wajda;

ed. Acadademy of Fine Arts,Cracow; High Film School, Lodz;

Film Director 1954 - ; Theatre Director Teatr Stary ,Cracow 1962 - 1998.

Man.Director Teatr Powszechny Warsaw 1989-90;

Hon.member Union Polish Artist and Designers (ZPAP)1977.
Pres.Polish Film Asscn.1978-83 . "Solidarity" Lech Walesa Council 1981 - 1989.
Senator of the Republic of Poland 1989 - 1991.

Member Presidential Council for Culture 1992- 94.

Founder: Center of Japanese Art and Technology, Cracow 1994.

Prizes: click here

Order of the Banner of Labor (second class)1975;
Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta;
Order of Kirill and Methodus (first class), Bulgaria 1978;
Oficier, Legion d'Honneur 1982;
Order of Rising Sun, Japan 1995.

Films: click here

Polish Television Theatre: click here

Theatre: click here



The Birthplace
My family comes from the village of Szarow. Not far away, several miles from Szarow, in the Brzeziow graveyard, lies my granfather, Kazimierz Wayda, still spelt with a "y". These country origins seem essential to me, since from this tiny village, from this place and this family came four young men, all of which became educated people, members of the intelligentsia. One of them was my father, so I am only second generation intelligentsia myself. I think that there was a kind of strength in these young men, who left everything behind because they believed that all their future is before them. At the age of 16 my father joined the Legions (a Polish liberation corps in the I World War), where he became an officer. The second brother found employment as a railway official and until the outbreak of the Second World War he held the post of a director in the Krakow Railways. The third set up a large locksmith's shop, where I worked during the German occupation; the youngest brother, who was a promising farmers' activist, died prematurely.

I think that the force that drove these boys to run away, to avoid staying in one place because life was somewhere else... that I am also driven in this way... I have never wanted to live in places where I was thrown by chance, instead I strove for places which - it seemed to me - I should reach.

So after the war ended I travelled to Krakow, because I thought that my destiny lies at the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts. Then I went to Lodz, because of the foundation of the Film School - the only one in existence at the time - where I thought my place was. Then I left Lodz for Warsaw, because it was where all the filmmaking decisions were made and, besides, a person simply ought to live in Warsaw. And then I returned to Krakow once more, because the Stary Theatre was here. It always seemed to me that life wasn't here and now, not in this place where I was living, not in this film I was making - although every single one of my films and theatre productions was made with the conviction that it is meaningful and important. But I always thought that there is something more before me, that I should be running, striving, chasing this something... it is very difficult to define. I think that escape is the most important theme of my life, continually linking my past to the things that will happen tomorrow. I think that the energy which drove my father and his brothers, was exactly the same energy which I sense in myself, the energy which, so to speak, forced me to work so intensively and to run so hard from this pastoral landscape. Perhaps I should have spent my life looking at these mountains and doing nothing else...

An excerpt of a speech from the film "The Debit and the Credit"




The War and Occupation
After the death in 1903 of their father, Kazimierz Wayda, all his sons (my father was 3 at the time) moved to Krakow and helped each other get an education. They were in Krakow again in the 30's, when they restored the house, their only piece of property. At the back of the house was the locksmith's shop; in this house, on the second floor, I used to hide during the occupation. And I must say that my uncles were so discreet (I think that this is a virtue of our family) that only after the end of the war I found out that in the same house they also concealed Jews.

So, thanks to my father's brothers, I was able to survive the occupation; I probably owe them my life, because my papers (documents) were very insufficient. I had to stay at home, I was scared even to go to the tram stop, because there was always some kind of control going on. Of course, it might seem that all I did here was just hide out with my family, but my uncles were extremely serious about all of this. There were several people employed here, we all had normal, everyday tasks, from which I returned late in the evening. If I still had any strength left I climbed out on this balcony, and here I painted some landscapes of the Salwator district. Sitting somewhere near the house I also painted this stream, and this was practically all I managed to do besides the hard work in my uncles' workshop, where I had to go every day.

This work later helped me understand what physical labour really means, what it means to work every day, to go to work in the morning, and when later, in the 50's, there was talk about the workers, the working class, I could say to myself "I have also been a worker". It was not strange to me.

An excerpt from a speech from the film "The Debit and the Credit"




Parents
My father was an officer, a junior lieutenant in the Polish Army. My mother was a teacher; she graduated from a teaching college and worked at a Ukrainian school. So they were a typical intelligentsia marriage. My father was promoted very quickly and he was moved to Suwalki, to the 41st Infantry Regiment garrison. And that's where I was born. Officers were constantly transferred from one garrison to another, so my father soon moved to Radom.

Professions such as a teacher or a military officer are directed towards other people. A teacher teaches children, an officer also educates, in a sense, disciplining the soldiers in his care. So both are people who work for others, not only for themselves. I think this quality was very distinct among the Polish intelligentsia in those times and I didn't know that a person could behave otherwise. You live for others, not for yourself.

And suddenly, in 1939, everything collapsed. My father was lost; he went to war and never came back. My mother could not stay at home, she had to go to work, we became workers. Our intelligentsia family found itself in completely different surroundings. I was 13 when the war broke out, so the only things I retained were the things that my home, school and the church had given me until that age.

My father, Jakub Wajda, lived only to the age of 40. He was captain in the 72nd Infantry Regiment and died at Katyn. But until 1989 we were not allowed to make an inscription on the family tomb, saying where he was killed. The censorship was so strict and the ban on all information on this subject so rigorous that when I recently tried to find a copy of the newspaper, published by Germans during the war, with the list of Katyn victims, my father's name among them, it turned out that the paper simply did not exist. Some mysterious hand removed the relevant copies from the library collection, so the experience of living through perhaps the most shocking moment of my life, when I could find out from a German paper that my father had been murdered, was denied to me.

War put an end to my country life - and to my pastoral life, because all childhood seems pastoral. Because of the war I finally could and had to make my own decisions, I knew I could no longer rely on anyone, everything now depended on me and only on me.

My father considered it natural that I should go into the Army. In 1939 I went to Lwow to enroll into the Cadets' School, but unfortunately I failed. I had always tried to have something to draw, I deemed this more interesting than other occupations, but nobody knew what should come out of it. During the occupation I realized, however, that I want to do this professionally and for a few months I attended drawing lessons at an art school owned by a professor from Lodz, which the Germans still allowed at that time. But the occupation became inceasingly more brutal, further education was out of the question, the usual choice was to hide or to work in a firm which could supply good papers - that is documents, which would allow us to go out in the street and move about in a normal way.

My mother came to Krakow near the end of her life, in 1950. My brother and I were already students at the Fine Arts Academy, and she was left behind alone in Radom. Our father didn't return from the war. We still had some hope, but in 1950 we were fairly certain that he won't come back. So our mother moved in with us, to our home in the Salwator district, and when she died prematurely - she was only 50 - she was buried here, because this is the Wajda family tomb and our uncles decided that she should remain here.

An excerpt from a speech from the film "The Debit and the Credit"




The Fine Arts Academy
The Fine Arts Academy was, and still is, named after Jan Matejko. In 1945 it experienced an influx of Paris-educated professors, who painted beautifully in the French postimpressionist manner.

But we soon realized that this was a contradiction. Here we were, painting nudes, flowers and still lives in the best French spirit, but our personal experience, our world, were quite different. We had seen the occupation and all its filth, we worked in factories. My fellow students often came straight from the Army, some of them still in uniform - nobody had any clothes to speak of, so everyone wore a uniform (I also dressed in my father's uniform which I had dyed navy blue) - but they came straight from the Army, dressed in battle green, and our shared experince was inconsistent with our painting. We felt we had another story to tell, but our painting expressed what we meant very incompletely - or not at all.

Here we had seen the smoking chimneys of the crematoriums, the arrests, the street roundups, the Warsaw uprising - and they were like Cézanne, who when he was asked, What did you do when the Prussians advanced on Paris? answered, I painted some landscape studies. They, our professors, dared to paint lanscapes and still lives during the war. And it was a kind of resistance against this... against this war and all the things that the German occupation brought to Poland. But now the war had ended and we thought that we should meet painting in a different way. That's why we could not agree... Later it turned out that this conflict perfectly suited the current cultural policy of the authorities.

What was going on?

The year was 1945 and 46 - I enrolled at the Academy in 46. After the party union in 1948 there was a lot of confusion - of an ideological character, so to speak. But socrealism already started taking shape and there was demand for a kind of painting which would represent the new reality: the workers, farmers, all the things which the new policy brought. All this actually boiled down to was planned sovietization of Poland. We liked to paint these other subjects, but we never thought that we would be required merely to imitate Soviet painting. I think that at this point many people left the Academy; they understood that it's simply not possible, that this kind of art has no artistic future,

The thing that today moves me most in the Academy rooms is the smell. It has haunted me for years, this smell of the workshop, of paint... This smell is always with me, and today, when I stand in this studio, I think that this is the place where I could have been happy. But at that time I didn't have enough strength, character, willpower, tenacity. There were other, more talented people, and I was married for the first time. My wife turned out to be a fantastic painter and this also sort of put me off. I had to find another group of friends, another college, another place for myself.

I studied at the Academy for three years. By the end of the third year I realized that I was rather lost, and then, completely by chance, I read in some weekly magazine that the Film School is searching for students. So I decided to leave Krakow for Lodz.

But Lodz was no longer a school to me. I think that whatever I learned or thought or found out about art, was here, in Krakow. Regardless of all our arguments and our criticism of our professors, here we talked about art and thought in terms of art. But the Film School was a technical college - there we talked about how to make a film, how to orient ourselves in the political situation, how to show this subject or another.

But what did it all mean, and why film should be an art, these things I learned here. For a long time I kept hoping that I could paint something, because they told me that in old age you can still paint something good. I don't think this is true. To paint something in old age I should have achieved two things when I was young - I should have found my own way of painting and my own subject. And then, even if I had abandoned painting for a time and then taken it up again, I could have used this experience. But it didn't happen this way, so now I can only be a person who comes, looks and understands.

An excerpt from a speech from the film "The Debit and the Credit"




Krakow
In 1950 together with my fellow students from Lodz I went to Nowa Huta. We were making a student movie - a feature - about the construction of the first socialist city in Poland. And so I gained the opportunity to see it all. At the beginning there was nothing here, only fields, but we all believed that the country people really needed such a city, because the villages were overpopulated. The idea was to create something that would transform Krakow. Krakow voted against the communists, so obviously it was necessary to create a community which would infuse this lifeless Krakow with its ideology.

Instead we found ourselves in a lifeless city, while Krakow was alive as never before, as if through an act of historic justice. And this city, intended to be a threat to Krakow, became in fact a kind of provincial little town, seemingly hundreds of miles distant from Krakow, a town where there is nothing of interest, where nothing happens, a town which nobody cares about.

I think that this is a kind of lesson in history, that you can't violate certain things, that there are places which radiate their culture. Krakow radiated culture and that is why it could not be destroyed.

An excerpt from a speech from the film "The Debit and the Credit"




The Film School
In the 1950's the Film School was an ideological school. There were no such schools before and this one had no tradition. So it was meant to be a school for "janissaries", intended to educate a film elite, so to speak, which would later become an ideological commando and play a decisive role in the political and social transformations in Poland.

Our professors and teachers were people who before the war sympathized with the left and who just now, at the end of the war, thought that the day had come for them to play their part.

But there emerged an unforeseeable contradiction. These people, our teachers, were educated people who understood what was going on in Poland, and though they deferred to this ideology, they did not completely lose their wits. So, for example, Andrzej Munk could not make a film with a consumptive hero (I was to play that hero because I was terribly thin), he could not make it even as a student etude, because to show a victim of consumption was considered just too pessimistic. On the other hand, the majority of our post-war colleagues came out "from the forest", from the resistance movement, infected with tuberculosis. This disease at the time really took its toll among the intelligentsia, and not only intelligentsia.

But, at the same time, our rector Jerzy Toeplitz brought from Paris a whole collection of French avant-garde movies - not the Russian avant-garde, not Eisenstein, but precisely French. And so I was able to see the "Le Ballet Mécanique", "Le Chien d'Andalousie", "L'Age d'Or" and "Le Ballet Mécanique" once again, all the films which opened my eyes to a completely different kind of cinema, films which we not only never had made, but never had even seen. The inconsistency was fantastic: on the one hand our professors at the school wanted us - perhaps as a way of justification - to make all these socrealist movies, and, on the other, they brought us closer to real art.

Jerzy Toeplitz viewed our school as belonging to a greater body of European film colleges, and not as some provincial school somewhere in the Polish city of Lodz.

An excerpt from a speech from the film "The Debit and the Credit"




The 1989 Crisis
I could have been sent to Auschwitz; by a strange twist of fate it didn't happen. I could have been arrested and sent to Germany as a slave labourer. I had a little luck, but this is a country where you actually have to find excuses for your luck. Because it is also true that all those who were braver, more determined, more desperate, more eager to take up arms, are mostly dead. And it must be said that these certainly were the best people.

Now, when we have freedom, so to speak, everyone asks me: OK, but why is it that you were successful while others weren't? Why could you make films while others couldn't? And could these films be right, if they were made in a state film studio and financed with state money? How is this possible? Which means that it would be better if I had spent my life doing nothing. And indeed, these people, who did nothing, have a ready excuse.

But what did we want? We only wanted to expand a little the limits of freedom, the limits of censorship, so that films such as "Popiol i diament" could be made. We never hoped to live to see the fall of the Soviet Union, to see Poland as a free country. We thought that all we could do was to expand this limit, so that the party wouldn't rule by itself but would have to admit the voice of the society it was ruling. If you want to participate in a reality created by an alien power, enforced by a historical situation, then you always risk taking part in some ambiguous game.

I saw quite soon that it was better to remain independent, that a party artist didn't really have more options only because he was allowed to make a film, permitted to do things apparently forbidden to others - quite the opposite.

The party controlled its members even more strictly. It summoned them and said: Why? You see, you know, why do you act this way? Why don't you follow the party line? But I couldn't be spoken to in this way, for I didn't have to follow the party line. I was a filmmaker. Of course, I didn't join the party, not only because my father wouldn't have joined the party, not because my mother wouldn't have thought it right, but simply because I was beginning to have a mind of my own.

All my life I was determined to have a kind of independence. Which is very funny, because there isn't a person more dependent than a film director. He depends on the people with whom he makes the film. He depends on the people for whom he makes the film. Not only on the audience, but also on those who make the film possible. Regardless of the political system, whether it is Poland or America, France or Bulgaria, it is the same everywhere. And this dependence is incomparably stronger. But it seemed to me that this might spring from the strong character of my father, of my whole family, who roused themselves and went away from these fields. The young people who left these villages - some went only in search of bread, but others also in search of bread and success. And immortality. To really become someone and decide not only for themselves but also for others.

Andrzej Wajda - Why Japan?
During the German occupation, which I spent in Krakow, I had to hide because my papers were very unsatisfactory. I went to town just once, when I found out that at the Sukiennice Hall there is an exhibition of Japanese art. I didn't know where the collection came from and who had assembled it here, in Krakow. Japan was a German ally during the war, so the Governor-General Frank, who resided at the Wawel Castle, decided to organize an exhibition as a homage to Japan and used this collection. I took a risk and slipped into the Sukiennice and I must say it was an incredible adventure. I remember every detail to this day and I think that the Japanese Centre, standing today by the Vistula river, originated to a large degree from the extraordinary event, which was my encounter with Japanese art here, in Krakow.

Many years later, when my films became well-known and I went abroad a lot, I was also noticed in Japan where I was awarded the prestigious "Kyoto Prize", which is the Japanese equivalent of the Nobel Prize. In short, I received an enormous amount of money - 340 000 USD was a sum beyond my imagination. In all my life I had never earned as much from a Polish movie and I thought - my wife, Krystyna, was of the same opinion - that this is a good moment to consider Japan in Krakow, because this huge collection, about 15 000 various objects, works of art, should be found a place here. Arata Isosaki made a drawing, he came here earlier, and we were standing on the terrace at the Wawel Castle, and he just looked. The city propsed several locations, but in his opinion it was best to build near water, because the most beautiful buildings in the world are built on the waterside. So he selected this location and then the political situation changed suddenly. The new voyevoda was a man who supported this project - Mr. Tadeusz Piekarz, who offered this plot for our Centre. The building was constructed in 15 months. Owing to the government of Japan and to the Railwaymen Union, which also donated a large sum of money for this purpose, Japan suddenly came into existence in Krakow.



Films
1955 Pokolenie [Generation]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Bohdan Czeszko, based on his novel
Director of Photography: Jerzy Lipman
Music: Andrzej Markowski
Cast: Tadeusz Lomnicki, Urszula Modrzynska, Tadeusz Janczar, Roman Polanski, Ryszard Kotas, Janusz Paluszkiewicz, Zbigniew Cybulski

This film is available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles)



1957 Kanal
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Jerzy Stefan Stawinski, based on his novel
Director of Photography: Jerzy Lipman
Music: Jan Krenz
Cast: Wienczyslaw Glinski, Teresa Izewska, Tadeusz Janczar, Emil Karewicz, Wladyslaw Sheybal, Stanislaw Mikulski, Teresa Berezowska, Tadeusz Gwiazdowski, Adam Pawlikowski and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
This film is also available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles)



1958 Popiol i diament [Ashes And Diamonds]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Jerzy Andrzejewski, based on his novel
Director of Photography: Jerzy Wojcik

Second Director: Janusz Morgenstern
Music: Jan Krenz, Michal Kleofas Oginski
Cast: Zbigniew Cybulski, Ewa Krzyzewska, Waclaw Zastrzezynski, Adam Pawlikowski, Bogumil Kobiela

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
Jerzy Andrzejewski's book Popiol i diament is available at the Merlin bookstore
This film is also available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles)



1959 Lotna
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Wojciech Zukrowski, based on his novel
Director of Photography: Jerzy Lipman
Second Director: Janusz Morgenstern
Music: Tadeusz Baird
Cast: Jerzy Pichelski, Adam Pawlikowski, Jerzy Moes, Mieczyslaw Loza, Bozena Kurowska, Karol Rommel, Roman Polanski



1960 Niewinni czarodzieje [Innocent Sorcerers]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Jerzy Andrzejewski, Jerzy Skolimowski
Director of Photography: Krzysztof Winiewicz
Music: Krzysztof Trzcinski-Komeda
Cast: Tadeusz Lomnicki, Krystyna Stypulkowska, Wanda Koczewska, Zbigniew Cybulski, Roman Polanski, Krzysztof Trzcinski-Komeda, Kalina Jedrusik-Dygatowa and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
This film is available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles)



1961 Samson
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Kazimierz Brandys, based on his novel and Andrzej Wajda
Director of Photography: Jerzy Wojcik
Music: Tadeusz Baird
Cast: Serge Merlin, Alina Janowska, Elzbieta Kepinska, Tadeusz Bartosik, Wladyslaw Kowalski, Jan Ciecierski, Beata Tyszkiewicz, Roman Polanski and others.



1962 Sibirska Ledi Magbet [Siberian Lady Macbeth]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Sveta Lukic, based on a short story by Nikolai Leskov
Director of Photography: Aleksander Sekulovic
Music: Dusan Radic
Cast: Olivera Markowic, Ljuba Tadic, Miodrag Lazarevic, Bojan Stupica and others.

This film is available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles)



1962 L'amour à vingt ans [Love At Twenty]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Jerzy Stefan Stawinski
Director of Photography: Jerzy Lipman
Music: Jerzy Matuszkiewicz
Cast: Barbara Kwiatkowska-Lass, Zbigniew Cybulski, Wladyslaw Kowalski



1965 Popioly [Ashes]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Aleksander Scibor Rylski, based on the novel by Stefan Zeromski
Director of Photography: Jerzy Lipman
Second Director: Andrzej Zulawski
Music: Andrzej Markowski
Cast: Daniel Olbrychski, Pola Raksa, Boguslaw Kierc, Beata Tyszkiewicz, Piotr Wysocki, Jozef Duriasz, Wladyslaw Hancza, Jadwiga Andrzejewska, Stanislaw Zaczyk, Jan Swiderski, Jan Nowicki and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
Stefan Zeromski's book Popioly is available at the Merlin bookstore



1968 The Gates To Paradise
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Jerzy Andrzejewski, based on his novel
English dialogs: Donald Howard
Director of Photography: Mieczyslaw Jahoda
Music: Ward Swingle
Cast: Lionel Stander, Ferdy Mayne, Jenny Agutter, Mathieu Carrière and others.

Jerzy Andrzejewski's story Bramy raju is available at the Merlin bookstore



1968 Przekladaniec [Roly Poly]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Stanislaw Lem, based on his short story
Director of Photography: Wieslaw Zdort
Music: Andrzej Markowski
Cast: Bogumil Kobiela, Ryszard Filipski, Anna Prucnal, Jerzy Zelnik and others.



1969 Wszystko na sprzedaz [Everything For Sale]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Wajda
Director of Photography: Witold Sobocinski
Music: Andrzej Korzynski
Cast: Andrzej Lapicki, Beata Tyszkiewicz, Elzbieta Czyzewska, Daniel Olbrychski and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore



1969 Polowanie na muchy [Hunting Flies]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Janusz Glowacki, based on his story
Director of Photography: Zygmunt Samosiuk
Music:Andrzej Korzynski
Cast: Malgorzata Braunek, Zygmunt Malanowicz, Daniel Olbrychski, Ewa Skarzanka, Hannna Skarzanka and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
This film is also available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles) as Fury Is A Woman



1970 Brzezina [Birch Wood]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz, based on his short story
Director of Photography: Zygmunt Samosiuk
Music: Andrzej Korzynski
Cast: Daniel Olbrychski, Emilia Krakowska, Olgierd Lukaszewicz, Marek Perepeczko and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore



1970 Krajobraz po bitwie [Landscape After the Battle]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Brzozowski and Andrzej Wajda, based on the novel by Tadeusz Borowski
Director of Photography: Zbigniew Samosiuk
Music: Antonio Vivaldi, Fryderyk Chopin, Zygmunt Konieczny
Cast: Daniel Olbrychski, Stanislawa Celinska, Tadeusz Janczar, Mieczyslaw Stoor, Leszek Drogosz, Aleksander Bardini, Stefan Friedmann, Jerzy Zelnik, Anna German, Malgorzata Braunek and others.



1972 Pilatus und andere [Pilat And Others]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Wajda, based on the novel The Master and Margaret by Michail Bulhajov
Director of Photography: Igor Luther
Music: Jan Sebastian Bach
Cast: Wojciech Pszoniak, Jan Kreczmar, Daniel Olbrychski, Andrzej Lapicki, Marek Perepeczko, Jerzy Zelnik and others.

Michail Bulchakov's book The Master and Margaret is available at the Merlin bookstore



1973 Wesele [The Wedding]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Kijowski, based on Stanislaw Wyspianski's drama
Director of Photography: Witold Sobocinski
Music: Stanislaw Radwan
Cast: Daniel Olbrychski, Ewa Zietek, Malgorzata Lorentowicz, Barbara Wrzesinska, Andrzej Lapicki, Wojciech Pszoniak, Marek Perepeczko, Maja Komorowska, Franciszek Pieczka, Marek Walczewski, Emilia Krakowska and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
Stanislaw Wyspianski's drama Wesele is available at the Merlin bookstore



1975 Ziemia obiecana [Promised Land]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Wajda, based on Wladyslaw Reymont's novel
Director of Photography: Witold Sobocinski, Edward Klosinski, Waclaw Dybowski
Second Directors: Andrzej Kotkowski, Jerzy Domaradzki
Music: Wojciech Kilar
Cast: Daniel Olbrychski, Wojciech Pszoniak, Andrzej Seweryn, Anna Nehrebecka, Tadeusz Bialoszczynski, Franciszek Pieczka, Bozena Dykiel, Kalina Jedrusik and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
Stanislaw Reymont's Ziemia obiecana is available at the Merlin bookstore



1976 Smuga cienia [The Shadow Line]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Boleslaw Sulik, Andrzej Wajda, based on Joseph Conrad's novel
Director of Photography: Witold Sobocinski
Music: Wojciech Kilar
Cast: Marek Kondrat, Graham Lines, Tom Wilkinson, Bernard Archard and others.



1977 Czlowiek z marmuru [The Man of Marble]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Aleksander Scibor Rylski
Director of Photography: Edward Klosinski
Second Directors: Krystyna Grochowicz, Witold Holz
Music: Andrzej Korzynski
Cast: Jerzy Radziwillowicz, Krystyna Janda, Tadeusz Lomnicki, Jacek Lomnicki, Michal Tarkowski, Piotr Cieslak, Wieslaw Wojcik, Krystyna Zachwatowicz and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
This film is also available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles)



1978 Bez znieczulenia [Rough Treatment]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Agnieszka Holland i Andrzej Wajda
Cooperation: Krzysztof Zaleski
Director of Photography: Edward Klosinski
Music: Jerzy Derfel, Wojciech Mlynarski
Cast: Zbigniew Zapasiewicz, Ewa Dalkowska, Andrzej Seweryn, Krystyna Janda, Emilia Krakowska, Roman Wilhelmi, Kazimierz Kaczor and others.

This film is available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles) as Without Anesthesia



1979 Panny z Wilka [The Maids from Wilko]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Zbigniew Kaminski, based on a short story by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz
Director of Photography: Edward Klosinski
Music: Karol Szymanowski
Cast: Daniel Olbrychski, Anna Seniuk, Maja Komorowska, Stanislawa Celinska, Krystyna Zachwatowicz, Christine Pascal, Zbigniew Zapasiewicz and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz's story Panny z Wilka is available at the Merlin bookstore



1980 Dyrygent [The Orchestra Conductor]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Kijowski
Director of Photography: Slawomir Idziak
Music: Ludwig van Beethoven
Cast: John Gielgud, Krystyna Janda, Andrzej Seweryn, Jan Ciecierski, Marysia Seweryn and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
This film is available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles)



1981 Czlowiek z zelaza [The Iron Man]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Aleksander Scibor-Rylski
Director of Photography: Edward Klosinski
Music: Andrzej Korzynski
Cast: Jerzy Radziwillowicz, Krystyna Janda, Marian Opania, Andrzej Seweryn, Irena Byrska and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
This film is also available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles)



1983 Danton
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Jean-Claude Carrière, based on Stanislawa Przybyszewska's play Danton's Affair
Cooperation: Andrzej Wajda, Agnieszka Holland, Boleslaw Michalek, Jacek Gasiorowski
Director of Photography: Igor Luther
Music: Jean Prodromides
Cast: Gérard Depardieu, Wojciech Pszoniak, Anne Alvaro, Roland Blanche, Patrice Chéreau, Emmanuelle Debever, Krzysztof Globisz, Tadeusz Huk, Marek Kondrat, Boguslaw Linda and others.



1983 Eine Liebe in Deutschland [Love In Germany]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Boleslaw Michalek, Agnieszka Holland, Andrzej Wajda, based on Rolf Hochhuth's novel
Director of Photography: Igor Luther
Decoration: Allan Starski
Music: Michel Legrand
Cast: Hanna Schygulla, Marie-Christine Barrault, Piotr Lysak, Daniel Olbrychski and others.



1986 Kronika wypadkow milosnych [A Chronicle of Amorous Incidents]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Wajda, based on Tadeusz Konwicki's novel
Director of Photography: Edward Klosinski
Music: Wojciech Kilar
Cast: Paulina Mlynarska, Piotr Wawrzynczak, Bernadetta Machala, Dariusz Dobkowski, Tadeusz Konwicki, Jaroslaw Gruda, Tadeusz Lomnicki, Krystyna Zachwatowicz and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore



1988 Les Possédes [The possessed]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Jean-Claude Carrière, based on a novel by Dostojevsky
Cooperation: Andrzej Wajda, Agnieszka Holland, Edward Zebrowski
Director of Photography: Witold Adamek
Decoration: Allan Starski
Music: Zygmunt Konieczny
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Jutta Lampe, Philippine Leroy Beaulieu, Bernard Blier, Jean-Philippe Ecoffey, Laurent Malet, Jerzy Radziwillowicz, Omar Sharif and others.

Fiodor Dostojevsky's novel Bracia Karamazow is available at the Merlin bookstore



1990 Korczak
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Agnieszka Holland
Director of Photography: Robby Müller
Decoration: Allan Starski
Music: Wojciech Kilar
Cast: Wojciech Pszoniak, Ewa Dalkowska, Teresa Budzisz-Krzyzanowska, Marzena Trybala, Piotr Kozlowski, Zbigniew Zamachowski, Jan Peszek, Aleksander Bardini, Wojciech Klata, Krystyna Zachwatowicz and others.

This film is available at the Merlin bookstore
This film is also available at the www.amazon.com (with English subtitles)



1992 Pierscionek z orlem w koronie [The Crowned-Eagle Ring]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Wajda, Maciej Karpinski, Andrzej Kotkowski, based on a novel by Aleksander Scibor-Rylski Pierscionek z konskiego wlosia (the Horsehair Ring).
Director of Photography: Dariusz Kuc
Decoration: Allan Starski
Music: Zbigniew Gorny
Cast: Rafal Krolikowski, Agnieszka Wagner, Adrianna Biedrzynska, Maria Chwalibog, Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieslak, Cezary Pazura, Miroslaw Baka, Piotr Bajor, Jerzy Trela and others.



1994 Nastasja
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Wajda, Maciej Karpinski, based on The Idiot by Dostojevsky
Japan translation: Masao Yonekawa
Director of Photography: Pawel Edelman
Decoration and costumes: Krystyna Zachwatowicz
Cast: Tamasaburo Bando, Toshiyuki Nagashima

Fiodor Dostojevsky's book Idiota is available at the Merlin bookstore



1995 Wielki Tydzien [Holy Week]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Wajda, based on Jerzy Andrzejewski's short story
Director of Photography: Wit Dabal
Decoration: Allan Starski
Music: G.F. Narholz, F. Ullmann, S. Burston, O. Siebien, R. Baumgartner, J. Clero, V. Borek
Cast: Beata Fudalej, Wojciech Malajkat, Wojciech Pszoniak, Magdalena Warzecha, Jakub Przebindowski, Cezary Pazura, Maria Seweryn and others.



1996 Panna Nikt [Miss Nothing]
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Radoslaw Piwowarski, based on a Tomek Tryzna's novel
Director of Photography: Krzysztof Ptak
Cast: Anna Wielgucka, Anna Mucha, Anna Powierza, Stanislawa Celinska, Janga Jan Tomaszewski and others.

Tomek Tryzna's novel Panna Nikt is available at the Merlin bookstore



1998 Pan Tadeusz
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Screenplay: Andrzej Wajda, Jan Nowina-Zarzycki, Piotr Weresniak, based on a poem by Adam Mickiewicz
Second Director: Adek Drabinski
Director of Photography: Pawel Edelman
Music: Wojciech Kilar
Cast: Michal Zebrowski, Alicja Bachleda-Curus, Boguslaw Linda, Daniel Olbrychski, Grazyna Szapolowska, Andrzej Seweryn, Marek Kondrat,
Krzysztof Kolberger, Siergiej Szakurow, Jerzy Binczycki and others.