Films about Wojciech Jerzy Has

Polyphonic, poetical story about Has’s work, made two years before his death. Ze snu sen is a suggestive presentation of the director’s skills, his way of working with actors and his art’s recurring themes.

Ze snu sen is narrated by the author Piotr Wojciechowski and stars the stage-designer Jerzy Skarżyński and actors who played in films by Has – Barbara Krafftówna, Gustaw Holoubek and Jan Nowicki (Józef) and Irena Orska. In the film, we can also see the silent Wojciech Jerzy Has, filmed in his flat in Łódź and in an empty shooting studio.

The comfort of working with Wojciech Has – Gustaw Holoubek says in the documentary – lay in the fact that Has never interrupted frames. He waited till the end. Then, he repeated it in the same version, without any improvements. He only made us understand – in a very moderate, reserved way – that maybe he could capture the actor’s better feeling or mood in the same interpretation.

Ze snu sen is an attempt to recreate the atmosphere of Has’s films through the skilful combination of contemporarily created scenes with quotations from the director’s works, called by one of the documentary’s characters – a poet of passing, of time and a poet of death.

Piotr Litka

A nostalgic portrait of The Partings (Pożegnania) – the second feature film by Has, based on prose by Stanisław Dygat. The story made so many years after the original film is narrated by actress Maria Wachowiak and film critic, Andrzej Kołodyński. The film also stars cinematographers: Mieczysław Jahoda and Jan Laskowski, actor Bronisław Pawlik and composer Lucjan Kaszycki.

I read the book first – Maria Wachowiak remembers – and a long time before I ever learned of any project to make a film based on The Partings. For us, for my generation, this book was the major novel of those times. The sheer thought of shooting it, not to mention me as the main character – that was absolutely bizarre for me. What will it be like?

Excellent performance in the role of Lidka, which was also the cinema debut of Maria Wachowiak, nostalgic cinematography by Mieczysław Jahoda, precise directing by Has and wonderful dialogues by Dygat – all these factors create the unique climate of The Partings. And although this film was made more than fifty years ago, it is still admired by generations of cinema-lovers.

 Piotr Litka

The first episode of the television documentary about the history of the Łódź Film School. The authors go back to the first after-war years when the Film Institute was set up and operated in Kraków. It was the first didactic film institution in Poland after the end of WW II. When the Kraków institute closed, the film school in Łódź was established. In the first episode of the series, beside Wojciech Has, the following recollect the beginnings of the school: Edward Zajicek, Jerzy Kawalerowicz and Mieczysław Jahoda.

Piotr Litka