POLAND / FILE: Oscar-winning director Andrzej Wajda plans new movie to defend Walesa

Record ID: 721388

  • Title: POLAND / FILE: Oscar-winning director Andrzej Wajda plans new movie to defend Walesa
  • Date: 17th June 2009
  • Summary: WALESA PUSHING BLOCK BLOCKS FALLING OVER LAST BLOCKS FALL OVER VARIOUS OF WALESA, CONFETTI IN AIR
  • Embargoed: 2nd July 2009 13:00
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  • Reuters ID: LVAD0PRRXI93F1701UZ5VE2O54IH
  • Story Text: Polish Oscar-winning director Andrzej Wajda plans to make a new film about the former Solidarity leader Lech Walesa in order to defend the pro-democratic activist against criticism he has been facing since communism ended 20 years ago.
    Wajda, awarded with an honorary Oscar in 1999 for lifetime achievements, is also recognised worldwide for his films 'Man of Marble' and 'Man of Iron' depicting Poland's complex fate over 50 years of communist rule and struggle for democracy.
    However, the role of the key leaders of Poland's fight against the Soviet-imposed regime has been often questioned since the toppling of communism in 1989 and Walesa himself was accused of collaborating with the communist secret police.
    After twenty years of democracy in Poland, Wajda, now 83, said it is his duty as a film director to resist such views.
    "I don't like the political situation that's arisen in Poland, I cannot accept it," Wajda said.
    "I cannot accept a situation in which the heroes of those days - the heroes of Solidarity who created the new political system in Poland, people like Lech Walesa, those gathered around him and who really formed the victorious Solidarity, who led Poland into the new Europe, into a entirely new situation - are being diminished, spat on. They are becoming a subject of some historical manipulation and I think that my duty as a director is to resist that."
    Some of Walesa's most ardent critics, under whose leadership Solidarity played a key role in the fight against communism in Poland, are rightist President Lech Kaczynski and his twin brother and former prime minister, Jaroslaw.
    The elimination of former communists from Poland's public life was high on the Jaroslaw Kaczynski government's agenda. It reformed the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) giving much more weight to the body overseeing Poland's communist-era files.
    Critics say the IPN deals with politically motivated 'witch hunts' rather than objective historic research.
    "In that sense, the movie will not be about Walesa's character. I want to make a movie about those who through institutions, like the IPN, who falsify history, lie to us, lie to the society and produce a new history that is not true," Wajda said.
    Asked why there was so much criticism towards Walesa these days, Wajda said it was because those who recently came into power were not the ones who played key roles in Poland's transformation.
    "That is why they now need to justify their position. They got here by the result of elections, by the decision of the voters. They now desperately need to add a heroic past to their biographies. Since they don't have it, they first want to bury the real heroes," he said.
    Wajda said under communism artists spoke for the whole nation since it had no real representatives, but when freedom came, society started speaking for itself.
    He said it was lucky Poland's NATO and European Union memberships did not suffer. He wishes for more free market and private ownership to be introduced into the country of 38 million.
    The spry octogenarian, who also has films about the Polish romantic composer Frederic Chopin and the World War Two Warsaw Ghetto in the pipeline, made clear he had no plans to retire.
    He said he's keeping himself busy with many different projects.
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