Who the Poles think is the best Polish directors?
Wajda’s Katyn best Polish film ever poll says (theNews.pl, 25/2/08):
Despite the fact that the American Film Academy didn’t award Katyn with an Oscar, Poles still think that it’s the best Polish film of all time.
The majority (55.5 percent) of Poles believe that Katyn is the best Polish film in history, a poll published in Polska daily reveals.
Wajda’s film is followed by an epic masterpiece The Teutonic Knights (20.9 percent) and The Deluge (20.4), both based on H. Sienkiewicz’s novels.
Andrzej Wajda himself was chosen by the poll participants the best Polish director (67.5 percent), followed by Roman Polanski and Krzysztof Kieslowski.
2 comments:
Strange, isn't it?
I was also shocked that culture.pl, whose mission is to promote Polish culture throughout the world, would end a profile on him with this:
[quote] Kieslowski was a controversial director. This is something that even such a great enthusiast of Krzysztof Kieslowski's cinema as Stanislaw Zawislinski readily admits, writing in the previously cited book:
"What delights some about Kieslowski's current cinema annoys and repulses others. What appears to some to be fresh, innovative, wise, moving, penetrating, to others seems 'counterfeit,' 'metaphysical gibberish,' 'professional mystification.'" [unquote]
The same article also explains why Kieslowski is much less loved by Polish than "Western" audience:
[quote] Beginning with DECALOGUE, he began to strip his films of the trappings of reality, simplifying them to the bare minimum and simultaneously increasing the density of his images. He resorted to means of expression differing from any he had used before and thus developed the film language that allowed him to conquer Europe. At the same time, however, he lost part of the Polish audience that had been faithful to him until then, an audience that was surely not persuaded by what he wrote in his autobiography:
"I betrayed nothing of myself in 'Veronica,' 'Three Colors,' 'Decalogue' or 'No End.' I think instead that I enriched my portrayals of people with that entire sphere of feelings, intuitions, dreams and superstitions that constitute the inner life of every human being."
This disparity in the reception of his films, deriving from the different viewpoints of Polish and Western viewers, seems more significant in Kieslowski's case than in that of any other filmmaker. [unquote]
Polish culture: Krzysztof Kieslowski
http://www.culture.pl/en/culture/artykuly/os_kieslowski_krzysztof
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