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Subverting Communism at Cinemas Near You – Andrzej Wajda

 

Andrzej Wajda, a Polish film director, has passed. In his life time Andrzej Wajda was an exception to the rule…

 

In an interview with RFE/RL’s Russian Service in 2005, Wajda said he chose to resist the communist authorities of Poland early in his artistic career. He noted there were two paths dissidents could take. The first was to resist by refusing to take any part in state-sponsored projects, the second was to try to work within the system.

“Some chose the first way, and I admired and understood them as they chose the path of resistance,” he said. “However, by doing so they condemned themselves to being totally absent from the cinema, the theater, or the literary world. There was another way, the path of those who use even the most limited possibilities to try to do something, to act.”

Choosing the second path, Wajda made films that initially won the approval of the Polish government by exploring subjects that did not challenge its values. His first film, A Generation, made in 1955, focused on the story of an adolescent who joins a resistance group in Warsaw fighting the Nazis.

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/poland-wajda-dissident-director-dies/28044098.html

 

 may you find peace