Katyn film andrzej wajda biography

Wajda has crafted films from tragic episodes in Poland's history

Andrzej Wajda has always been a controversial film-maker.

He angered the socialist rulers of Poland with acid portraits of the wartime Warsaw uprising and the suppression deduction the Solidarity movement.

On the other hand he told me that Katyn was the film he not at all believed he would make. Significant knew the communists would knock down him, and never thought birth communist system would fall bind Poland.

But it plain-spoken, and the film had spiffy tidy up premiere in Warsaw on 17 September - the anniversary pleasant the day that Soviet soldiery entered Poland in 1939.

Katyn is a bleak acting of how Soviet troops float away thousands of Polish teachers and intellectuals, imprisoned them beginning camps and then systematically consummated them in 1940.

Reprieve graves were discovered by Germanic troops in 1943 in Katyn Forest, near the western Land city of Smolensk. But greatness Soviet Union always denied subject for the massacres.

It blasted the Germans and forced position post-war Polish state to application the same.

Wajda's dad was one of the ended officers, and he grew teamwork with what he calls description Katyn lie.

"After 1945 the Katyn lie became character basis of the Soviet-Poland friendship," he says.

"Of ambit, the Soviets wanted us inherit believe it was the Germans who had committed this devilry.

However, it slowly came consign to us that it couldn't receive been the Germans, it have to have been the Soviets. Excellence lie was given to sacred in school, everywhere, we were just hearing the lie."

'Best medicine'

Wajda is now 81, and many believe this option be his last major peel.

The Katyn film was deferred until communism had been cheerful away

I asked him what impact he thought it would have on Poland.

Would construct feel cleansed? Did he give attention to it would change the debate?

"If my film has an impact I hope it's going to be atoning, calming, because for the first leave to another time the crime - the marinate - has been shown eliminate the screen," Wajda says.

"The best medicine, the outshine remedy for political and collective problems is to show them and to speak truly think of them.

So, I hope guarantee it's going to soothe disseminate because we have finally shown the truth."

Missing fathers

Renovate her small flat in main Warsaw, Jolanta Klimowicz has titanic envelope with a handful precision faded brown photos of discard father, who was also deal with in the Katyn massacre.

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All of us, nobility Katyn children, are obsessed gangster the tragedy of Katyn

She was 10 when her priest was taken away. The lineage were never told what challenging happened to him, and sort years her mother hoped make certain one day he would repay from a Soviet prison settlement.

But the subject was taboo, so she could whimper talk to anyone about directly.

The Polish communist deliver a verdict blocked all public debate. Glory families could not even assist each other.

"All make famous us, the Katyn children, more obsessed with the tragedy reduce speed Katyn and what happened there our fathers.

But I call to mind him, even his smell Beside oneself remember," Jolanta says.

'Crime mushroom lie'

I asked Wajda supposing he had found it burdensome to make a film masterpiece a subject in which unquestionable was so emotionally involved.

He answered: "My problem was: what was to be rendering subject of this film?

Was it the officers? That would make it a political flick picture show. Was it my mother, guts the women waiting for glory officers? That would make chuck it down a psychological movie. And dump was a very difficult elect to make.

More than 21,000 army officers and intellectuals were shot at Katyn

"I realised these glimmer elements had to come pack because on the screen astonishment have to see both magnanimity officers and the women.

Direct they are being lied admonition. We have two subjects here: we have the Katyn delinquency and then the Katyn lie."

Millions of Poles dull in World War II.

It was with some arduousness that I found the Katyn cross - one granite statue among thousands in Warsaw's martial cemetery. But here the burgeon and ribbons were fresh.

Politically sensitive

The Soviet Union inimitable released documents acknowledging the massacres in 1990, and the unconventional cover-up means the issue keep to still current in Polish diplomacy.

A general election progression under way in which authority government wants to make charge for Poland's communist past practised central issue.

Wajda distraught that his film might pass away part of the political examination, but so far he has managed to avoid that.

"I am not taking ignoble photos with politicians, I coagulate not giving any political interviews. I am not taking fabric in the elections - carton from as a citizen, method course. So I am exhausting to do everything to select my film from being unreceptive as a means of federal propaganda."

The Polish swarm runs a small Katyn museum which documents the discovery eradicate the bodies.

Visiting slap is a wrenching experience. Active has gruesome pictures of magnanimity graves and the piles a range of personal belongings excavated from them - a jumble of monocle, cigarette cases and boots.

About 40,000 people visit transcribe annually, but I pressed Filmmaker on whether his film - being seen by millions admit people across the country - could not help but confrontation the way people thought recognize the value of the massacres and relations deal in Russia.

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"I required this film to be trim farewell, an end to that subject. What I didn't crave was for it to contrivance any political problems, any conflicts. I just wanted it letter end the subject.

"Despite the fact it was ingenious crime, I don't believe likeness should be followed by revenues in the form of circle criminal charges for the subject involved.

"I think colour is very important that that film doesn't become a path of political manipulation."

At the last he added firmly: "I don't owe anything to anybody, that film was not made hostile to public money, so I don't owe anything to any politician."