Section: Special: Fraternal Kiss

Człowiek Z Marmuru

The Man of Marble

Andrzej Wajda
Poland, 1977, 157 Min

Featuring a long-forgotten hero of labour from the early fifties, a film student unable to grasp why the Stakhanovite movement is no longer considered appropriate film material and contemporary witnesses now unwilling to remember, Wajda's film on Stalinism's long shadow set a tide in motion that afterwards proved impossible to stem.

ZEBRA Film Studio

What if a Hero of Socialist Labour no longer wishes to keep up the charade constructed around him since the ideology that inspired him has proven illusionary? And what if, decades later, a film student who still believes in the ideals she was imbued with during her student years resolves to shoot a film on the life of this hero of yesteryear? Why, although Stalinism is supposedly now considered passé, is she having obstacles placed in her path? In any case Mateusz Birkut, one time Stakhanovite bricklayer from socialist model city Nowa Huta, is now seemingly impossible to trace, with student Agnieszka, played by Krystyna Janda in her movie debut, only gradually able to draw nearer to her subject, along the way meeting contemporary witnesses who benefitted from Birkut's rise to fame, as well as those who doubted his resolve to turn his back on the system. Ultimately it is in Gdańsk, where the authorities shot at striking workers in December 1970, that she finds his son Maciek ... PN

Filmformat
DCP | Farbe / colour & s/w / b/w
Drehbuch
Aleksander Ścibor-Rylski
Kamera
Edward Kłosiński
Ton
Piotr Zawadzki
Schnitt
Halina Prugar
Ausstattung
Allan Starski
Musik
Andrzej Korzyński
Darsteller
Krystyna Janda, Krystyna Zachwatowicz, Jerzy Radziwiłowicz, Tadeusz Łomnicki, Kazimierz Kaczor, Jacek Łomnicki, Michał Tarkowski, Piotr Cieślak, Wiesław Wójcik
Produzent
Zespół Filmowy X
Produktion
X Film Production
Kontakt
ZEBRA Film Studio
Marcin Ogiński
Pulawska 61
02595 Warsaw
Poland
+48.22.84.55.48 4
marcin.oginski@zebrafilm.pl
www.zebrafilm.l
Andrzej Wajda

Andrzej Wajda - born in 1926, died in 2016. He was in the Polish resistance in Radom during the Second World War and took drawing lessons in the underground. He directed numerous feature films. In 2000 he received the Honorary Award of the Academy and he was awarded the Honorary Golden Bear at the 2006 Berlinale.

Movies
ZIEMIA OBIECANA (1974
KATYŃ (2007)
WIELKI TYDZIEŃ (1995, FFC 2011)
WAŁĘSA. CZŁOWIEK Z NADZIEI (2013)