Plus Camerimage and bwa Gallery in Bydgoszcz are the organizers. The exhibition is being presented due to courtesy of the Museum of Japanese Art and Technics "Manggha" in Kraków.

Andrzej Wajda is a man who needs no introduction - a film and theatre director, screenwriter, “Solidarity" social worker, philanthropist, recipient of Order of Polonia Restituta and Order of the White Eagle, member of the prestigious French Académie des Beaux-Arts. A true living legend. Born in 1926 in Suwalki, Wajda has shown artistic skills since early childhood. At first, he wanted a career in painting, but after having graduated from Krakow's Academy of Fine Arts he chose cinema - in 1953 he finished his education in National Film School in Lodz, with his head full of uncompromising ideas.

To write that Andrzej Wajda has influenced Polish cinema is like saying that Czeslaw Milosz was just a poet. As a filmmaker he was one of the founders of Polish Film School, the movement that put Polish cinema on the film map of the world. As an auteur he established a unique directing style that made all his work immediately recognizable. As an activist he actively worked for Polish Filmmakers Association (as President), Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw (as an artistic director) and “X" Film Group (as a manager). As a promoter of Polish cinema abroad he received many of the most prestigious film awards, including Cannes' Palme d'Or. American Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences acknowledged his work with the honorary Oscar. As a man of the Renaissance not only did he fight for the betterment of his country, but he has also shown many young people the way to fulfill their dreams, inspiring many of them to become filmmakers. In 2001 in Warsaw he and Wojciech Marczewski established Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing (a few years later it became simply Wajda School). Its students mark their way throughout film festivals around the world. This year, at 19th Plus Camerimage, Wajda School will celebrate its 10th anniversary.

Andrzej Wajda's list of accomplishments can fill many pages; his film work itself is a basis for many critical analyses and master's theses. And his films, both those finished, and those to come, will constantly motivate new filmmakers to try new things. Plus Camerimage Lifetime Achievement Award to Polish Director is a reminder of Andrzej Wajds's artistic achievements, with the special emphasis put on the poetic, painting-like visual side of his films.

The audience of this year's PLUS CAMERIMAGE festival will have a one-of-a-kind chance to see the unique exhibition dedicated to the works of Andrzej Wajda in the Bydgoszcz Municipal Gallery bwa. The 55 drawings put on display - created concomitantly with Wajda's filmmaking activities - were selected from over 300 works published in the album Rysunki z całego życia (Drawings from a Lifetime). Antoni Rodowicz, Wajda's friend of long standing, is both the originator of the exhibition and the publisher of the album. The grand opening will be held on the second day of the festival in the Municipal Gallery bwa, on 27 September (Sunday), at 6 PM, in the presence of the author himself. The exhibition will be open to the public until the end of December 2011. We would like express our deepest thanks to the “Manggha" Centre of Japanese Art and Technology in Cracow for lending the drawings.





From the Editor of Andrzej Wajda's Rysunki z całego życia (picture album), Świat Książki 2011

My thirty-year friendship with Andrzej Wajda has meant, among other things, frequent joint excursions to the theatre, to the movies, to concerts and to exhibitions. It is after seeing an interesting exposition that our conversations take the most interesting turn and the exchange of our impressions becomes most intensive. In the course of the many exhibitions we have seen together in Warsaw, Cracow, but chiefly in Paris, I have been able to appreciate the great admiration Andrzej Wajda has for the fine arts and for painting in particular. Painting has always been to him a source of inspiration. He attested to this particular passion when organising the “I like this" exposition in Cracow's National Museum. In this exposition, Andrzej Wajda showed no restraint and, owing to his huge knowledge and worldly discernment, we were able admire a fascinating array of exceptional works. Another and meaningful example of the artist's passion for art was the creation of the “Manggha" Centre of Japanese Art and Technology in Cracow. In 1989, Andrzej Wajda donated his entire Kyoto Prize to the Kyoto-Cracow Foundation he established jointly with Krystyna Zachwatowicz. This was a tremendous amount of money at the time. The foundation's main presumption was to create a museum which would display the famous collection of Japanese art gathered by Feliks Jasieński. The world famous director and his wife garnered the support of many people in Poland and in Japan. The most important help came from the trade union of Japanese railway workers, which organised in Japan a nationwide fund-raising for this unprecedented project. Both founders personally took part in it, standing alongside the railway workers in railroad stations around Japan under banners explaining the purpose. Thus, owing to the involvement of many people, we have had 16 years to admire this collection of ancient and contemporary Japanese art in one of the most beautiful Polish museums, built according to a design that was graciously offered by one of the world's leading architects - Arata Izosaki.

This fascination with painting is visible in Andrzej Wajda's films. The frames of some of them are almost mirror images of paintings by such masters as Jacek Malczewski (in the Birch Wood), David (Danton) or Hopper (Sweet Rush). Wajda was also the initiator and author of the recreation project of Wyspiański's stained-glass windows, which were unfortunately never completed, because he wanted to redevelop them for the purpose-built City of Cracow Information Pavilion. In our album, we also present the never-before-published sketches of stained-glass windows dedicated to Father Jerzy Popiełuszko at the St. Stanislaw Kostka Church in Warsaw's Żoliborz district.

Andrzej Wajda also presided over the organisation of the competition for the Museum of Modern Art in Radom. Once, many years ago, I paid Wajda a visit with a zinc etching plate and the proposition that he engrave something on it. After a while, he returned the plate to me etched with a self-portrait. When I showed him a paper print a few hours later, he said that no film gave him so much pleasure as this single print did. This love for art did bring some satisfaction in the end. Doubtlessly the drawings did it. During his studies at the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts, he was involved with the “Autodidactic Group" created by Andrzej Wróblewski. After three years spent within the Academy's walls, he moved to the Film School in Łódź where, despite maintaining ties with his friends from the Group, he never went back to painting.

With time, he adapted his passion to new circumstances and occupation. He dedicates every free moment to small graphic forms. His drawings have always distinguished themselves by a fist-class stroke and a fine sense of observation. In his innumerable notebooks and sketchpads, he recorded what he saw, where he was and what commanded his admiration. The drawings presented in this album constitute a selection of Andrzej Wajda's great artistic output. As this artistic activity is a sort of “hobby", it took me a long time to convince him to authorise the publication of a sectional presentation of his work. He has already shown fragments of his works at a few exhibitions in Poland. Some of the drawings have been reproduced in books about him. Yet their manner of presentation did not reflect their true worth. Aware of the superior quality and exceptionality of his creative powers, I decided that the time had come for a serious and meticulous edition that would show this quality in a worthy manner.

The several hundred works reproduced in the album are divided into thematic chapters bearing titles given to them by the Author. Each chapter contains three types of drawings. The first group includes sketches depicting places or people met and drawn on the spot during travels around the world. The second group consists of visualisations of staging ideas and film or TV projects. A third group - of drawings and watercolours - is composed of accomplished works of art. The entire collection is carefully reproduced and presented in its natural dimensions - except for a few sketches - allowing one to follow everything Andrzej Wajda has seen with his own eyes. The Author's texts, written with a sense humour and distance toward himself, drag us even deeper into these drawings.

Antoni Rodowicz
August 2010