Wojciech Has

Directing

Wojciech Has

Born 1925-04-01 · Kraków, Poland

Wojciech Jerzy Has (April 1, 1925 – October 3, 2000) was a Polish film director, screenwriter and film producer. Wojciech Jerzy Has was born in Kraków, with Jewish origin on his father's side, and Roman Catholic on his mother's. During the wartime German occupation of Poland, Has studied at the Kraków Business and Commerce College and later clandestine underground classes at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts - until it was disbanded in 1943. When the war ended, he went on to study at the reconstituted Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. In 1946, Has completed a one-year course in film and began producing educational and documentary films at the Warsaw Documentary Film Studio, and in the 1950s moved on to work at Poland's premier filmmaking academy, the National Film Studio, in Łódź. Has made his debut with Harmony (Harmonia, 1948), a medium-length feature, and began making full-length feature films in 1957. In 1974, he was appointed as professor in the directing department at the National Film School in Łódź. Throughout his long and prolific career, he directed such notable films as The Saragossa Manuscript, The Doll and The Hour-Glass Sanatorium (also known as The Sandglass). Early on in his career, Has gained a reputation as an individualist who avoided political overtones in his art. He produced his most important films throughout the period when the Polish Film School was at its most prominent; however, his work possessed its own stylistic feeling that was independent of the over policial themes that dominated the prevailing Polish School. In practically every film, Has sought to create hermetic environments, in which the problems and storylines of his protagonists were always of secondary importance to the particular world he had created, characterized by an accumulation of random objects that formed unique visual universe. Has's oeuvre is commonly associated with Surrealist painting in Polish criticism. This is reinforced by the director's dream poetic and his use of objects, which are also characteristic of many canvasses by the Surrealists. Has also created a number of intimate psychological dramas during his career, such as How to Be Loved and Farewells, focusing on damaged individuals who have difficulty settling into life. In his work, he was fascinated by outsiders and people incapable of finding their place in reality. Two currents remain evident in Has's output: one was his cinema of psychological analysis, the other his films of visionary form, in which he most often used the motif of a journey. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Acting credits

No artwork available
NR

A multi-dimensional portrait of one of the most distinctive artists in the history of Polish cinematography. Wojciech Jerzy Has always hovered over the line where the mainstream met the avant-garde and his biography was marked by moments of artistic triumphs and personal tragedies.

Description Found Years Later

2023

Saragossa poster
NR

Making-of documentary made for Polish television on The Saragossa Manuscript

Saragossa

1998

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Ślady

2012

Gold Dreams poster
5.8

The inability of a truck driver to relate to normal life after an accident for which he feels himself responsible.

Gold Dreams

1962

No artwork available
NR

The documentary talks about the origins, development and achievements of the Polish film school. People from the environment of the "Filmówka" in Łódź, among others. Wanda Jakubowska, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Antoni Bohdziewicz, Janusz Morgenstern or Kazimierz Kutz. The film is richly illustrated with archival materials and the first films of the school. The beginnings of the Łódź Film Festival begin in Krakow with the Young Film Workshop; On May 6, 1945, at Józefitów 16 production facility of the Polish Film Production Company, an inaugural meeting is held. After numerous transformations, in July 1946 the Young Film Workshop and the Film Training Course began activities, which can be considered as the beginning of state film education in post-war Poland. The later fate of the school is already connected with Łódź; July 16, 1948, the act of establishing the Film School was signed.

Polish School

1997

Behind the camera

The Hourglass Sanatorium poster
7.5

Jozef visits a dilapidated Sanatorium to see his father. Jozef undertakes a strange journey through the many rooms of the sanatorium, each which conjures worlds composed of his memories, dreams and nightmares.

The Hourglass Sanatorium

1973

The Hourglass Sanatorium poster
7.5

Jozef visits a dilapidated Sanatorium to see his father. Jozef undertakes a strange journey through the many rooms of the sanatorium, each which conjures worlds composed of his memories, dreams and nightmares.

The Hourglass Sanatorium

1973

An Uneventful Story poster
6.3

A well-known professor of medicine finding himself at the threshold of autumn of his life, takes stock of his achievements and experiences. "In the end it ends with what has been known for a long time: that conscious life without a fixed worldview is not life, but torment, horror. - wrote Anton Chekhov in one of his letters summarizing "An Uninteresting Story". The protagonist, Professor Nikolai Stepanovich, is a character characteristic of Chekhov's entire oeuvre - a Russian intellectual from the late nineteenth century, depressed by boredom and a sense of his own uselessness and the meaninglessness of his existence.

An Uneventful Story

1983

An Uneventful Story poster
6.3

A well-known professor of medicine finding himself at the threshold of autumn of his life, takes stock of his achievements and experiences. "In the end it ends with what has been known for a long time: that conscious life without a fixed worldview is not life, but torment, horror. - wrote Anton Chekhov in one of his letters summarizing "An Uninteresting Story". The protagonist, Professor Nikolai Stepanovich, is a character characteristic of Chekhov's entire oeuvre - a Russian intellectual from the late nineteenth century, depressed by boredom and a sense of his own uselessness and the meaninglessness of his existence.

An Uneventful Story

1983

The Saragossa Manuscript poster
7.8

During the Napoleonic wars, a Spanish officer and an opposing officer find a book written by the former's grandfather.

The Saragossa Manuscript

1966

No artwork available
NR

A film about the Song and Dance Ensemble at the J. Strzelczyk Mechanical Works in Łódź.

Our Team

1955

Goodbye to the Past poster
6.7

An actress visits her hometown to attend the funeral of her grandfather. She realizes that the places and people from her past differ from her cherished memories.

Goodbye to the Past

1961

The Codes poster
6.9

An elderly man returns to Poland to find his long-lost son, missing since World War II. In his quest the man is forced to contemplate the elusive and coded nature of truth itself.

The Codes

1966

No artwork available
7.0

The son of a poor shoemaker dreams of the titular accordion. He is ready to give up his shoes, jacket, and savings in order to get the instrument displayed in an antique shop.

Accordion

1947

No artwork available
7.0

The son of a poor shoemaker dreams of the titular accordion. He is ready to give up his shoes, jacket, and savings in order to get the instrument displayed in an antique shop.

Accordion

1947

No artwork available
6.5

A miniature parable about a young boy who misunderstands the function of a bird feeder.

Janek’s Feeder

1952

The Noose poster
7.1

A day in the life of an alcoholic. With the help of his girlfriend Krysia, Kuba attempts to regain control of his life.

The Noose

1958

No artwork available
6.8

Documentary about the hometown of Wojciech Has.

My City

1950

No artwork available
8.0

Documentary about the life of farmers in Poland.

The First Crop

1950

No artwork available
8.0

Documentary about the life of farmers in Poland.

The First Crop

1950

The Doll poster
6.4

Set in the 19th century Warsaw. The indolence of aristocrats who, secure with their pensions, are too lazy to undertake new business risks, frustrates Wokulski. His ability to make money is respected but his lack of family and social rank is condescended to. Because of his "help" (in secret) to "the doll's" impecunious but influential father, the girl becomes aware of his affection.

The Doll

1968

The Doll poster
6.4

Set in the 19th century Warsaw. The indolence of aristocrats who, secure with their pensions, are too lazy to undertake new business risks, frustrates Wokulski. His ability to make money is respected but his lack of family and social rank is condescended to. Because of his "help" (in secret) to "the doll's" impecunious but influential father, the girl becomes aware of his affection.

The Doll

1968

Farewells poster
5.6

The story takes place before World War II and centers on Pawel, a member of a conservative, middle-class family, and his love for Lidka, a taxi dancer. Social conventions and the lovers' inability to defy those forces Pawel and Lidka benefit. Times change, war breaks out, leading to Pawel sent to Auschwitz while Lidka marry his cousin. Their love has survived and conventions are no longer the issue.

Farewells

1958

Farewells poster
5.6

The story takes place before World War II and centers on Pawel, a member of a conservative, middle-class family, and his love for Lidka, a taxi dancer. Social conventions and the lovers' inability to defy those forces Pawel and Lidka benefit. Times change, war breaks out, leading to Pawel sent to Auschwitz while Lidka marry his cousin. Their love has survived and conventions are no longer the issue.

Farewells

1958

No artwork available
NR

Students at a school in Podkarpacie spend the entire spring and summer collecting herbs, and in the fall they enjoy the projector they earned themselves.

Herbalists of the Stony Valley

1952

No artwork available
NR

Students at a school in Podkarpacie spend the entire spring and summer collecting herbs, and in the fall they enjoy the projector they earned themselves.

Herbalists of the Stony Valley

1952

How to Be Loved poster
7.4

An actress travels from Warsaw to Paris and during the trip reflects on the last few years of her life. It goes back to the German occupation and her hiding of a fellow actor who has supposedly killed a collaborator.

How to Be Loved

1963

Gold Dreams poster
5.8

The inability of a truck driver to relate to normal life after an accident for which he feels himself responsible.

Gold Dreams

1962

The Tribulations of Balthazar Kober poster
6.6

Story about the young Balthazar thrown from one remarkable event to the other. On his way through a plague hit the landscape, he meets the Kabbalists, priests - and himself.

The Tribulations of Balthazar Kober

1988