Remembering

Andrzej Wajda

60TH
 For 50 years, Film at
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Drive-In Venue
Bronx Drive-In at the Bronx
Zoo
2300 Southern Blvd
Bronx, NY 10460
You can Recycle me

THE 59TH NYFF

Returning every fall to celebrate a new slate of essential cinematic offerings from
around the globe, the New York Film Festival has been an enduring part of New
York’s rich cultural and historical landscape for nearly six decades. The 59th edition of
Film at Lincoln Center’s illustrious festival represents just that—an enduring symbol
of New York’s strength and resilience through the collective spirit of cinema. Marking
a historic first for NYFF, this year’s reimagined festival will feature drive-in and virtual
screenings, providing movie lovers near and far the opportunity to enjoy the festival
in the format they find most comfortable.

VENUES
The reimagined festival will feature virtual and drive-in screenings. All ticket sales will
be streamlined via online purchase; physical box office sales are not available at any
venues at this time. Outdoor screenings will have extensive health and social
distancing procedures in place.

Bronx Drive-In at the Bronx Zoo

2300 Southern Blvd
Bronx, NY 10460

Brooklyn Drive-In at The Brooklyn Army Terminal

80 58th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11220

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The 59th New York Film Festival has concluded! We invite you to watch NYFF
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 NYFF59 Team
Eugene Hernandez, Director of NYFF As a reminder,
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CONTENTS
Introduction 1

Chaplin Award Gala 2

Director's Bio 3

Schedule 6

Films 7

Interview 15

Critical Appreciation 17

Festival Information 18
Introduction
Film at Lincoln Center is devoted to supporting the art and elevating the craft of
cinema. The only branch of the world-renowned arts complex Lincoln Center to shine
a light on the everlasting yet evolving importance of the moving image, this nonprofit
organization was founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international film. Via
year-round programming and discussions; its annual New York Film Festival; and its
publications, including Film Comment, the U.S.’s premier magazine about films and
film culture, Film at Lincoln Center endeavors to make the discussion and
appreciation of cinema accessible to a broader audience, as well as to ensure that it
will remain an essential art form for years to come.

New York Film Festival

Since 1963, the New York Film Festival has brought new and important cinematic
works from around the world to Lincoln Center. In addition to the Main Slate official
selections, the festival includes newly restored classics, special events, filmmaker
talks, panel discussions, an Avant-Garde showcase, and much more. The New York
Film Festival highlights the best in world cinema, featuring top films from celebrated
filmmakers as well as fresh new talent.

1
 AW

Chaplin Award Gala

Film at Lincoln Center’s Annual Gala began in 1972 and honored Charlie Chaplin,
who returned to the U.S. from exile to accept the commendation. Since then, the
award has been renamed for Chaplin, and has honored many of the film industry’s
most notable talents. The Chaplin Award Gala is Film at Lincoln Center’s most
significant fundraising event, helping to support the organization’s ongoing work to
enhance the awareness, accessibility, and understanding of the art of cinema.

Film at Lincoln Center kicked off its 50th anniversary with a special gala on April 29,
2019. Reflecting and building upon the organization’s half-century introducing New
York audiences to many of the industry’s most acclaimed and important filmmakers
—including Pedro Almodóvar, Jane Campion, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Spike Lee, Richard
Linklater, Lucrecia Martel, Dee Rees, Steven Spielberg, and Agnès Varda, to name
but a few—the 50th Anniversary Gala honored Film at Lincoln Center’s legendary
past and vibrant present, and look ahead as we extend our commitment to the film
community.

The Chaplin Award Gala will return in 2021 and we honour Andrjez Wajda, who has
left an indelible mark on filmmaking and television.

2
A Legacy of Hope:
Andrzej Wajda,
1926-2016
When Andrzej Wajda died last October at age 90, he left behind more than a
canonical body of work. His 35-plus fiction features, his documentaries, his
plays for television, and over 30 live stage productions that often breathed
contemporary social urgency into classics, amount to a vast cultural legacy.
From the war trilogy (Generation, 1955; Kanal, 1956; Ashes and Diamonds,
1958) that ushered in the Polish School, to political dramas (Man of Marble,
1976; Man of Steel, 1981) that served as manifestos for the burgeoning
Solidarity movement, Wajda kept his finger on the pulse of Poland’s
historical and cultural transformations. His education at an arts academy in
Krakow, bold sense of composition, often inspired by Romanticism and other
Polish painting traditions, and rare gift for literary adaptation are all
especially evident in such masterpieces as Ashes (1965), Landscape After the
Battle (1970), The Wedding (1972), The Promised Land (1974), and The
Maidens of Wilko (1979). Throughout his work, Wajda was
no stranger to allegory, so often a
necessity, as he sought to evade
the censors. What today seems
like a blunt device was in Wajda’s
hands a powerful tool—a way to
smuggle in secret portents. In
Kanal, which details the deaths of
resistance soldiers during the
Warsaw Uprising in 1944, the
city’s waste canals—actually a
studio set constructed to
maximize claustrophobia and
dramatic black-and-white
chiaroscuro—evoke the Inferno.

3
 Unflinching Observer of Modern Poland

Danuta Stenka in “Katyn” (2007) from the Polish director Andrzej Wajda, about a World War II
massacre of Poles by Soviet forces for which the Germans were blamed.

The inverted Christ on a cross that hangs upside down in Ashes and Diamonds signals
the lost innocence of youth, wagered and lost against the cynicism of the
apparatchiks and the military. In the fiercely political Man of Marble, the fallen
colossal sculpture of a record-setting worker, stowed away and forgotten, is a potent
reminder of how the Socialist system exploited human potential and the public’s
goodwill for its own propagandistic ends. Similarly, early in Wajda’s final film,
Afterimage, a giant banner bearing Stalin’s portrait is hung on the façade of a
building that houses the studio of its artist protagonist, Wladyslaw Strzeminski.

Those familiar with Wajda’s filmography will recognize in Strzeminski’s fragility and
physical degradation an echo of the famous trash-heap death scene in Ashes and
Diamonds. A scene, in which Strzeminski, after being cast out of the academy,
denied his food rations and right to purchasing materials in state art shops, is reduced
to dressing store windows, and collapses, amidst half-dressed, pallidly gleaming
mannequins, is one of the film’s most chilling. Boguslaw Linda, cast as Strzeminski,
even recalls the brooding charisma of star Zbigniew Cybulski in Ashes and Diamonds.

4
 Presented in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute. Organized by Florence Almozini and Dan Sullivan.

5
SCHEDULE

13th Afterimage

2016 Poland 98 minutes Polish with English

subtitles. Introduction by Annette Insdorf

14th Man of Iron

1981 Poland Polish with English subtitles 156
minutes. Awarded the Palme d’Or at the 1981
Cannes Film Festival

15th The Maids of Wilko

1979 Poland/France 118 minutes Polish with

English subtitles. Chekhovian recreation of a
long-vanished Poland.

16th The Promised Land

2016 Poland 98 minutes Polish with English

subtitles. Introduction by film scholar Annette
Insdorf

6
7
Based on the life of avant-garde painter and theorist Władysław
Strzemiński, Afterimage dovetails the final years of the artist’s life
with the rise of Socialist Realism in Poland. As a teacher at Łódź’s
State Higher School of the Visual Arts, Strzemiński refuses to
respect the Stalinist doctrine of university authorities and the
Ministry of Culture and Art, who exert vicious bureaucratic
methods to silence his voice and ability to work. An impassioned
memorial to a great painter, Wajda’s last film is also a stark
observation of a political mechanism that nearly erased one of
Poland’s most important artists from public memory.

Wajda’s film is perfectly well-made and much of it rings

immediately true, but the director, now a foaming-at-the-mouth
anti-communist, is obliged to avoid a whole series of historical
issues. The “Socialist Realism” that was the state–artistic doctrine
in Stalinist Poland had nothing to do with socialism or realism, it
''
was the “aesthetic” expression of the bureaucracy’s reactionary
nationalist outlook. Why does Wajda not turn his attention as well
to the present conditions in “free, democratic” Poland, where the
vicious, reactionary ruling elite edges closer and closer to
authoritarian, police-state rule?

They praise the ones who suck up.

They're silent about the real artists.

8
9
Winkel (Marian Opania), a down-on-his-luck radio reporter, is sent
to Gdańsk to dig up dirt on Tomczyk (Jerzy Radziwiłowicz), one
of the leaders of a burgeoning workers’ movement. Trying to get
into the shipyard that’s become the epicenter of the movement,
Winkel bumps into Tomzyk’s old friend (Bogusław Linda), who
shows him never-released footage of the August 1970 riots.
Gradually the story of Tomczyk and his father, former model
worker Mateusz Birkut (also Radziwiłowicz), emerges with a
portrait of the rising Solidarity movement. Awarded the Palme
d’Or at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival, this (loosely defined)
sequel to Man of Marble is, in retrospect, as much about the end
of an era as the dawn of a new one. Within months of its release,
martial law would be declared and Solidarity repressed.

His work as a chronicler through files, actors, workers and songs

surely did not allow him to go further, and although he himself

''
assures that he does not know to what extent art reflects the
truth. While the workers applaud the signed compromise, the
party officials assure that the document will only be dead paper; a
policeman asks the repentant journalist. Who do you think will
win? It is the same as the public when the word "end" appears.
Hopefully Wajda himself can tell about it in his next movie.

The really nice thing is not being

afraid of anything. Even in the
slammer you know at least they can't
lock you up.

10
11
After a string of hard-hitting political works that roused the
censors’ ire and brought him into the international spotlight,
Wajda deliberately changed pace with this wistful, elegiac, almost
Chekhovian recreation of a long-vanished Poland, based on a story
by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. Following the death of a close friend,
40-year-old farm manager Wiktor (Daniel Olbrychski) returns to
the village where he spent his youth. Next door, five sisters Wiktor
knew have gathered for the summer. The inviting tranquility of the
women’s lazy summer days hardly conceals the sense of sadness
that runs through their lives; and the return of Wiktor, who had
loved a sister who has since died, upsets their delicate emotional
balance.

His unexpected social call stirs up yearnings and memories among

the surviving siblings, each of whom represents a different aspect

''
of femininity, and Wajda paints their various relationships with
light strokes, hinting at the thwarted desire and simmering anger
behind their upper-crust decorum. The sense of loss and regret in
this 1979 feature often recalls Bergman, though Wajda's
meticulous re-creation of the milieu--exquisitely shot by Edward
Klosinski.

It will leave one feeling invigorated,

almost like new. Such are the
astonishments of art.

12
13
Polish Nobel Prize–winner Władysław Reymont’s novel is given a
startling immediacy in Wajda’s vibrant adaptation, a film regularly
counted among the greatest Polish films ever made. The Promised
Land is set in 19th-century Łódź, just then becoming a major
manufacturing center, where three friends decide to ride the
industrial wave by pooling their resources and establishing a
modern textile factory. Their gambit is successful beyond their
dreams, but it extracts a high price from each of them. An analysis
of masculine friendship and a nation fitfully heading towards
modernity, The Promised Land is also a lament for a multicultural
Poland.

Wajda hoped The Promised Land would be well-received in the

West. He calls it an American film, because it’s about money, and
perhaps that feeling doesn’t actually clash too much with his
admission that he crafted some parts of the plot to appease the
contemporary Communist regime. It’s certainly accessible – as

''
Thomson says in his essay, it doesn’t require the viewer to have an
understanding of the obscure symbols of Polish Romanticism,
unlike some of Wajda’s work. Indeed, the story’s relevance has
outlasted its 19th-century setting and the film’s Cold War context,
and it remains an urgent and fascinating narrative of human
morality.

I have nothing, you have nothing, and

he has nothing; that means together
we have enough to start a factory.

14
I Don’t Make Films for Myself:
An Interview with Andrzej Wajda
Author: Culture.pl
Published: Oct 9 2017
‘In order to put our films across, we
need to look for a European language
of cinema, not the language the cinema
uses to indirectly communicate with the
domestic audience,’ said Andrzej
Wajda, the legendary Polish director
who passed away on 9th October 2016.
Below we present one of his last
interviews, where Wajda discussed the
release of his long-awaited film about
the fascinating artist Władysław
Strzemiński, his thoughts on why the
audience is so important in filmmaking,
and how six decades in cinema didn’t
quench his thirst for freedom.
JP: You always stress the importance of
the Polish school of filmmaking in the
creation of our cinematography. You
made films in tough post-war
conditions. Where did the success of
the Polish school come from?
AW: We were young, and our cinema
was young. We had a story to tell, our
war experiences. We wanted not only
the Poles, who had experienced it all
themselves, but also the world to see it
in our films. And to put them across,
one needs to look for the proper film
language. A European language of
cinema, not the language cinema uses
to communicate with a domestic
audience.
At that time, the new post-war
European cinema started to come into
being: Italian neorealism. That was the
direction we identified the most with.
We – Polish filmmakers – wanted to
present ourselves to the world. But the
Polish language is unknown abroad and
the dialogues uttered by the actors
couldn’t fulfil this expectation,
especially because the words were the
main focus of the censorship. So we
thought that films with strong images
would gain more interest abroad and
appeal more to foreign audiences.
15
JP: What do you think about the big
production concerning Polish history
that the new government has
announced. A film of Hollywood
proportions is being talked about.
AW: Polish cinema has proven that it
exists and can speak to other nations
while speaking about Polish history.
The best proof are the awards, the
prizes won at festivals, an Oscar for
Paweł Pawlikowski’s Ida for instance.
We are Polish cinematography. This is
the right path for us, not infamous
onscreen disasters such as The Day of
the Siege: September Eleven 1683
(Polish title: Bitwa pod Wiedniem).
But I think that films that warn us
about certain mistakes from the past
are also important. It’s also a role of
cinema.
JP: You mentioned being 30 and feeling
as if there was no new knowledge
ahead of you. Now 60 years later, if you
were to assess yourself and the changes
that you’ve undergone, how have you
changed over those six decades in
terms of your worldview?
AW: I’ve become a bit bitter. I thought
that the victory I witnessed and in some
sense took part in – I’m taking about
the victory of the Solidarity movement
and Poland becoming a free country –
would take a slightly different course. I
thought that the process would go
more smoothly. That it wouldn’t be so
difficult. That we all wanted the same
thing. After all, why was it all going on?
JP: Do you consider the 26 years of
Polish freedom well-spent?
AW: Under the communist regime, we
blamed our dependence on the Soviets
for our weaknesses, all our mistakes.
We said, ‘they don’t allow us to’. We
also weren’t aware that our shipbuilding
industry, mining, steel plants,
agriculture, weaving mills were all
producing for the Soviet market, which
disappeared overnight. While making
The Promised Land, I had to wait until
the Łódź machinery had finished
making the next batch of military
jackets for the Soviet army.
Today, this excuse doesn’t work
anymore. I still have the enthusiasm of
Solidarity in my heart, when the
movement was developing and
operating, when a new hope for
freedom was arising… Then we felt
much more mature. And that we were
still on our way to Europe.
Cinemas gained
new young
audiences who
wanted films made
for them.
-Wajda, 2016
16
Appraisal by
J. Hoberman,
New York
Times
I interviewed Mr. Wajda several times in the early 1980s, both during the heady
Solidarity period and after the dismal establishment of martial law. He was as
avuncular and courtly as his movies were hectic and bruising, and more than a bit
sardonic. One interview took place at the Watergate office complex in Washington.
“Who else will be recording this?” he asked.
A prolific director of theater as well as movies, Mr. Wajda could be uneven, but his
triumphs were spectacular. “Ashes and Diamonds,” casting Zbigniew Cybulski — a
young actor with the look and rebellious charisma of James Dean — as a doomed
partisan of the anti-Communist Home Army, was among the greatest of all youth
films, a game changer not only for Polish cinema but, once the film was exported,
also for national film industries throughout Eastern Europe.
A prismatic investigation of the rise and fall of a postwar model worker, densely
interweaving fact and fiction, “Man of Marble” was the Polish equivalent of “Citizen
Kane.” Together with its post-Solidarity sequel “Man of Iron” (1981), a movie forged
in a white heat, it provided a sweeping panorama of postwar Polish history. If “Man
of Iron” is a lesser film, it was because, as Mr. Wajda told me, “we felt the reality was
stronger than the possibility of artistic expression.”
“Kanal” caused the first contretemps of Mr. Wajda’s career. “The Silver Palm did not
protect my film from the Polish critics and audience,” he would recall. “The reaction
of the latter was not surprising, as the viewers were mostly the uprising participants
or their families, who had lost their loved ones in Warsaw. This film could not satisfy
them. They had licked their wounds, mourned their dead, and now they wanted to
see their moral and spiritual victory and not death in the sewers.”
At his greatest, Mr. Wajda made movies that had to be seen. His subject may have
been 20th-century Poland — but that is to say, the 20th century itself.

17
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