Visual and Historical Imagination of Andrzej Wajda

The course explores the cinema of one of the world’s greatest directors Andrzej Wajda (1926-2016). From his first film, “A Generation” (1955), to his last one, “Afterimage”(2016), Wajda unceasingly shaped visual and historical imagination of Polish post-war generations. His art--growing out of the trauma of WWII, and the experience of social and political changes in the twentieth-century Poland and Eastern Europe—shows the work of collective memory, and portrays individual lives enmeshed in history. His films— always in a dialogue with other forms of visual arts and literature—are also commentaries on the role of art and the artist in contemporary society.