Wajda Studio celebrates 10 Year
The Polish tradition for high quality documentaries is very much kept alive by the Wajda Studio, which formerly was called The Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing. Especially the short documentary has had and has a strong home at the school, now studio. The film ”Paparazzi” (33 mins.) is in competition at this years’s idfa, there is a new film by Maciej Drygas screened, “Tonia and her Children” by Marcel Lozinski, teacher at the school, is at Docs for Sale, as is “Argentinian Lessons” by Wojciech Staron. (For the subscribers of DOX magazine a dvd with 3 short films has been made available with the last issue). At idfa the birthday was celebrated at a reception where also representatives from the Krakow Film Festival and the Krakow Film Foundation were present.
From the site of the Studio a small historical outline:
The Wajda Studio (formerly The Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing) was founded in 2001 by two directors, some of the most acclaimed Polish artists – Andrzej Wajda, winner of an Oscar for lifetime achievement, and Wojciech Marczewski, an outstanding director and educator.
The Wajda Studio continues the Wajda School’s mission and supports auteur film projects. We are looking for feature, documentary films, and short films on contemporary subjects. The Studio focuses on international co-operation and co-productions. The Studio makes a difference through artistic supervision from the best Polish and European artists, and by playing an emphasis on project development. It offers script doctoring and the production of short fictions and documentaries under the “30 minutes” program and „First Documentary” program. The Studio runs the EKRAN (link) – International Program for Film Professionals. The Studio pays special attention to the promotion and distribution of its projects. Among the achievements of the Wajda Studio there are more than 50 documentary and feature films, and over 200 shorts. In addition, our films have been screened and awarded at major festivals including Berlinale, San Sebastian, Karlovy Vary, Hot Docs, IDFA and DOK Leipzig. The Studio (formerly known as the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing) has twice been awarded the Best Documentary and Short Films Producer prize at the Krakow Film Festival, in 2008 and 2010.
Photo: Wajda in the film about him: Let’s Shoot, made by graduated students, who have all made great documentaries: Maciej Cuske, Thierry Paladino, Marcin Sauter and Piotr Stasik.