100 years of Andrzej Wajda

Friday 6 March is the one hundredth birthday of Andrzej Wajda, the grand old man of Polish cinema. The Kinoteka Polish Film Festival has been running a wonderful retrospective here in London that’s still ongoing, and on Klassiki we’re screening a two-part tribute. Until 26 March, subscribers can watch Wajda’s epochal double header Man of Marble and Man of Iron, about the history of worker resistance in communist Poland. And we’re also running two of Wajda’s great literary adaptations: Siberian Lady Macbeth and The Promised Land.

With a career running from the 1950s until the 2010s, it can be hard to know where to start with Wajda. One thread running throughout his incredibly varied filmography is his dogged exploration of Poland’s troubled modern history: from the nineteenth century through the trauma of the war and the communist era that followed. It’s one reason he’s so revered in his homeland to this day. So, in order to dig a little deeper into Andrzej Wajda’s history lessons, host Sam Goff invited Owen Hatherley to join him once again on the pod. Listeners may remember Owen from our episode on tower block cinema – but he’s not only an architecture expert, he’s also a Polish film and history aficionado. They discussed some of Wajda’s recurring themes and the highs – and lows – of his national history on film.

Watch our two-part Wajda tribute: Men of History and Literature on Film.

Read our essay on Wajda’s career and check out a watchlist of his films on the Klassiki Journal.

Get in touch: podcast@klassiki.online.

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Intro music by Juliet Merchant.