Profile of Agnieszka Holland on Famous Like Me

Agnieszka Holland (born November 28, 1948 in Warsaw, Poland) is a film and TV director and screenplay writer.

She was born to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, and was raised a Catholic. Best recognized for her highly politicized contributions to Polish New Wave cinema, Agnieszka Holland ranks as one of Poland's most prominent filmmakers. Holland graduated from the Prague Film and TV Academy (FAMU) in 1971. She began her career as an assistant director for the Polish film directors Krzysztof Zanussi and Andrzej Wajda, including Zanussi's 1973 film Illuminacja and Wajda's 1982 film Danton.

Holland's first major film was Provincial Actors (Aktorzy Prowincjonalni, 1978), a chronicle of the tense backstage relations within a small town theater company that served as a metaphor for Poland's contemporary political situation. The film won the International Critics Prize at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival.

Holland only directed two more major films in Poland, Fever (GorÄ…czka, 1980) and A Lonely Woman (Kobieta samotna, 1981), before emigrating to France, just before martial law was declared in Poland in December, 1981.

Holland received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film for her 1985 film Angry Harvest, a German production about a Jewish women on the run in World War II.

The director's defining work, and perhaps her best film, was Europa Europa (1991), based on the biography of Solomon Perel, a Jewish teenager who fled Germany for Poland following Kristallnacht, in 1938. Upon the outbreak of World War II and the German invasion of Poland, Perel fled to the Soviet-occupied section of Poland. Later captured during the German invation of Russia in 1941, Soloman convinced an SS officer that he was German, and found himself enrolled in as elite SS military academy. The film won a Golden Globe and garnered Holland her second Academy Award nomination for best foreign film.

A friend of the great Polish writer and director, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Holland collaborated on the screeplay for his film, Three Colors: Blue. Like Kieślowski, Holland frequently examines issues of faith in her work.

In an 1988 interview, she said that although women were important in her films, feminism was not the central theme of her work. Rather she suggested that when she was making films in Poland under the communist regime, there was an atmosphere of cross-gender solidarity against censorship, which was seen as the main political issue.

Holland's later films include Olivier, Olivier (1992), The Secret Garden (1993), Washington Square (1997), the HBO production Shot in the Heart (2001) and Julia Walking Home (2001). Her most recent film is The Healer (2004).

Quotes

• "His penis saved his soul. Otherwise, he might have become a total Nazi" (on Europa Europa character Solomon Perel, who attempted to pose as an Aryan German in German-occupied Poland during World War II, despite that fact that he was a circumcised Jew).

Filmography

• God's Sin (Grzech Boga, 1970, 25')
• Evening at Abdon's (Wieczór u Abdona, 1975, 48', based on a story by JarosÅ‚aw Iwaszkiewicz)
• A Girl and Acquarius (Dziewczyna i "Akwarius", 1975, 80')
• Sunday Children (Niedzielne dzieci, 1977, 80')
• Screen tests (ZdjÄ™cia próbne, 1976, 90')
• Something for something (CoÅ› za coÅ›, 1977, 62', TV)
• Provincial Actors (Aktorzy prowincjonalni, 1978, 108', International Critics Prize at Cannes Film Festival)
• Fever (GorÄ…czka, 1980, 122')
• Kobieta samotna (A Lonely Woman, 1981, 93')
• Postcards from Paris (1982, francuski film TV)
• Culture (1985, documentary)
• Angry Harvest (Bittere Ernte, 1985, 101', Germany, Academy Award nominee for the best foreign language film)
• Kill the Priest (1988, France-UK)
• Europa, Europa (1990, 113', France-Germany, Academy Award nominee for the best screenplay)
• Olivier, Olivier (1991, 110', France)
• The Secret Garden (1993, 102')
• Red Wind (1994, TV film based on a Raymond Chandler novel)
• Total Eclipse (1995, 111')
• Washington Square (1997, 110')
• The Third Miracle (1999, 119')
• Shot in the Heart (2001, 98')
• Julia Walking Home (2001)
• Golden Dreams (2001, documentary)
• The Healer (2004)

Literature

• Quart Barbara Koenig. 1988. Women Directors: The Emergence of a New Cinema. New York: Praeger. ISBN 0-275-93477-3

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Agnieszka Holland