Jerzy Kawalerowicz

Jerzy Kawalerowicz ( born January 19, 1922 in Gwoździec, now Ukraine, † December 27, 2007 in Warsaw) was a Polish film director, screenwriter and film producer. He was married to actress Lucyna Winnicka.

Life

Jerzy Kawalerowicz 1947 was assistant director of Wanda Jakubovska in their film - Holocaust drama The last stage. From 1947 to 1949 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. He began in the early 1950s, even making films and was a representative of existentialism in Polish cinema of the 1950s and 1960s. An outstanding example of this is his film Night Train 1959 with Zbigniew Cybulski and Leon Niemczyk in the lead roles. 1955 Kawalerowicz founded the film studio Kadr, which he has since presided as artistic director, and produced the all of his films as well as films by major Polish directors like Andrzej Wajda, Andrzej Munk Kazimierz Kutz or.

His literary adaptations were among the legendary films of Polish and international cinema. In 1961 he filmed with Mother Joanna of the Angels a novel by Iwaszkiewicz (the film was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the Film Festival of Cannes 1961) and in 1966 with Pharaoh a novel by Bolesław Prus, who was until then the most expensive epic film of Poland at the same time. Kawalerowicz received for this film an Oscar nomination in the category Best Foreign Language Film. At the Berlinale 1978 Kawalerowicz was awarded the Silver Bear for his film, The Death of the President and his life's work.

According to Kawalerowicz it was again in 2001 when he filmed the novel Quo Vadis Henryk Sienkiewicz Polish Nobel Prize winner as a complex large-scale production. The world premiere took place in the presence of Pope John Paul II at the Vatican.

He received both from the State University of Film, Television and Theatre in Łódź and from the Sorbonne an honorary doctorate.

From 1985 to 1989 was Kawalerowicz deputy in the Sejm, from 1986 to 1990 he was also the National Arts Council of.

Filmography

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