Andrzej Wajda Quotes

26 quotations by Andrzej Wajda

Young directors had no choice but to throw themselves into writing scripts. That did not have a positive effect on the quality of Polish cinema.

Why does there exist a global American entertainment industry, but there isn't an equivalent coming from France or Italy? This is the case simply because the English language opens the whole world to the American cinema.

When a film is created, it is created in a language, which is not only about words, but also the way that very language encodes our perception of the world, our understanding of it.

We expected that people were just waiting for the collapse of the Soviet Union, or at least for its retreat, and they were going to be full of initiative in all areas of life - in culture, in economy and in politics.

There is no filmmaking legislation because distributors are not interested in sharing their money with the film industry - for instance, by giving a percentage of ticket sales back to filmmakers.

The difficulty with the present state of affairs is that there is no legislation on the sources of funding for the Polish film industry. There is no legislation concerning filmmaking. And, there is no legislation on television that would be beneficial to filmmaking.

Previously the same Polish audiences would have been pressured into seeing cinema made for adults, films made by us about those spheres of life that were significant for us and which should be significant for our society.

One might have thought that the most significant change in the film industry that would come about with a transition from the communist economy to capitalism would fundamentally concern the sources of funding.

Nevertheless, in the theatre, and in the cinema, the contemporary reality of Poland has been represented only to a minuscule degree in the last 12 years.

It was progressively more difficult to find work in the theatre, as well.

It turned out that the country was helpless in the face of a new reality.

In the same period, Polish literature also underwent some significant changes. From social-political literature, which had a great tradition and strong motivation to be that way, Polish literature changed its focus to a psychological rather than a social one.

In the first years after the systemic transition, our screens showed American entertainment that had not been available before, or had been available only sporadically.

In the first years after 1989, films were partly financed from the state's budget as well as by public television. Still, except for a few special cases, most films are made this way.

In Europe, there is no television filmmaking legislation that could assist film production because private broadcasters are not interested in supporting Polish film.

I think that adult Polish audiences, while observing what was happening in Poland, started to give in to a particular kind of anxiety.

However, that old mode of Polish filmmaking virtually disappeared.

Films made in the spirit of the past continued to be made.

Eventually, the state's funding covered only the stages leading to presenting a film project to potential funding bodies. It was enough to produce a script, indicate casting and put together a budget to present it all, but nothing beyond that.

Even better, there were established two separate committees deciding on state film funding.

Cinemas gained new young audiences who wanted films made for them.

By dint of that concern and because that society was willing to examine its particular reality, Solidarity could come into existence.

At the same time, television theatre became more visibly active.

As I said earlier, there are no writers who could create a literary vision of the new reality.

Also a great part of Polish industry proved to have existed only to support the Soviet military industry, and it became superfluous and incapable of being transformed into anything else. We did not foresee that or the magnitude of these phenomena.

A novelty in Polish filmmaking was that it was possible to find funds for a big production. However, at the same time, the state budget committed less and less money to filmmaking.