Andrzej Wajda

Janina Falkowska (University of Western Ontario)

Ed. by Ewa M. Thompson, Rice University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.8.3: Polish Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Roman Koropeckyj (University of California, Los Angeles), Ewa M. Thompson (Rice University)

Dates

Born 6 Mar 1926
Activity 1955-ongoing

Places

Born in Poland
Active in Poland

Activities

Primary

Film Director

Other

Member of Parliament
Theatre Director

Resources

Andrzej Wajda is perhaps the greatest and the most prolific filmmaker coming from the formerly Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe. He was born in Poland in 1926 and educated as a painter and filmmaker. The themes and aesthetics of his films have contributed in a major way to the creation of a historically oriented iconography in Polish cinema. Altogether, Wajda has made 45 films dealing with war, history, politics of the 1970s in East Central Europe, and grand universal themes like love and death.

One can identify six major thematic groups which roughly define Wajda’s cinematic topics. These are: Themes of World War II, Passion and History, Private Preoccupations in Contemporary Times, Grand Themes of Life and Death, Polish …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2336 words

Citation: Falkowska, Janina. "Andrzej Wajda". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 September 2010 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12462, accessed 22 November 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here