1974: Wiecz?r u Abdona (Evening at Abdon?s; An Evening at Abdon) (for TV). 1976: Niedzielne Dzieci (Sunday Children) (for TV). 1977: Zdjecia probne (Screen Tests) (episode. in sketch film); C?s za c?s (Something for Something) (for TV?co-director with Wajda). 1979: Aktorzy prowincjonalni (Provincial Actors). 1981: Gor?czka (Fever, The Fever: The Story of the Bomb). 1982: Kobieta samotna (A Woman Alone, A Lonely Woman) (co-director). 1985: Bittere ernte (Angry Harvest). 1988: To Kill a Priest (Le complot) (co-scenarist/scriptwriter). 1990: Europa, Europa. 1991: Olivier, Olivier.
Films as Director: 1990: Largo Desolato (co-director with Zizka?for TV). 1993: The Secret Garden. 1995: Total Eclipse. 1997: Washington Square.
1970?maintained her studies in Prague even after the Soviet invasion; was jailed by the authorities after months of harassment by police; 1972?returned to Poland and became member of film collective ?X,? headed by Andrzej Wajda; 1973?began career as a production assistant to director Krzysztof Zanussi on Illumination; 1970s?worked in Polish theater and television; 1979?began writing scripts for films directed by Wajda, directed first feature, Provincial Actors; 1981?moved to Paris after the declaration of martial law in Poland, and began making documentaries for French television; 1985?earned first major international acclaim for Angry Harvest;
Golden Globe Award, Best Foreign Language Film, and National Board of Review, Best Foreign Language Film, 1990, for Europa, Europa.
Warsaw, Poland, 28 November 1948.
Graduated from the Filmova Akademie Muzickych Umeni (FAMU) film school in Prague, 1971, where she studied directing.
The death camps were liberated decades ago. Auschwitz and Birkenau, Chelmno and Dachau?the ABCDs of the Final Solution?have long been silent memorials to the mass murder of millions. Despite this passage of time?and despite the media-induced impression that Steven Spielberg?s Schindler?s List is the only movie ever made which confronts the mass extermination of a people during World War II?the Holocaust has long been a topic for filmmakers. One such filmmaker is director Agnieszka Holland.
Holland is a Polish Jew who was born scant years after the end of World War II. The legacy of that era has influenced her life, and her work. She is not so much interested in the politics of the war, in how and why the German people allowed Hitler to come to power. Rather, a common theme in her films is the manner in which individuals responded to Hitler and the Nazi scourge. This is most perfectly exemplified in what is perhaps her most distinguished film to date: Europa, Europa, a German-made feature based on the memoirs of Salamon Perel, who as a teenaged German Jew survived World War II by passing for Aryan in a Hitler Youth academy.
Even though Holland only wrote the screenplay for Korczak?the film was directed by her mentor, Andrzej Wajda?it too is one of her most impassioned works. Her simple, poignant script chronicles the real-life story of a truly gentle, remarkable man: Janusz Korczak (Wojtek Pszoniak), a respected doctor, writer, and children?s rights advocate who operated a home for Jewish orphans in Warsaw during the 1930s. Korczak?s concerns are people and not politics. ?I love children,? he states, simply and matter-of-factly. ?I fight for years for the dignity of children.? In his school, he offers his charges a humanist education. And then the Nazis invade his homeland. Given his station in life, Korczak easily could arrange his escape to freedom. But he chooses to remain with his children and do whatever he must to keep his orphanage running and his children alive, even after they all have been imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto.
After directing several theatrical and made-for-television features in Poland, Holland came to international attention in 1985 with Angry Harvest, a superb drama about a wealthy farmer who offers to shelter a Jewish woman in his cellar in World War II Poland. His repressed sexuality transforms this act of kindness into one of hypocrisy, as he attempts to abuse his guest. Films such as Angry Harvest, Korczak, and Europa, Europa serve a necessary, essential purpose: they are tools that can be used to educate young people, Jew and non-Jew alike, about the exploitation and extermination of a race. They are monuments?as much to the memory of generations past as to the survival of generations to come.
Not all of Holland?s films have dealt directly with the Holocaust. Another of her themes?which also may be linked to the Holocaust by its very nature?is the loss of innocence among children that occurs not by the natural progression of growing into adulthood, but by odd, jarring circumstances. Olivier, Olivier, like Europa, Europa and Korczak, also is a narrative based on fact. It is the intricate account of a country couple whose youngest offspring, Olivier, mysteriously disappears. Six years later he ?reappears,? but is no longer the special child who was a joy to his family. Rather, he is a Parisian street hustler who claims to have forgotten his childhood. One also can understand Holland?s attraction to The Secret Garden, an adaptation of the Frances Hodgson Burnett children?s story about a ten-year-old orphan who revitalizes a neglected garden in her uncle?s Victorian mansion.
Most of Holland?s films have been artistically successful. Two exceptions have been To Kill a Priest, an ambitious but ultimately clumsy drama about an ill-fated activist priest in Poland; and Total Eclipse, about the relationship between French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine (and based on a play by Christopher Hampton), which was a fiasco?one of the more eagerly anticipated yet disappointing films of 1995. Thankfully, however, these failures comprise the minority of Holland?s filmic output.?