Film director and scriptwriter, born in Warsaw in 1948.

Having graduated from FAMU, the Prague film school, Holland returned to Poland to work as an assistant director on Krzysztof Zanussi's "Iluminacja / Illumination" and later on Stanisław Latałło's "Listy naszych czytelników / Letters from our Readers". She worked with the X Film Studio, managed by Andrzej Wajda. Her TV film debut was "Wieczór u Abdona / An Evening at Abdon's" and her first feature film was "Aktorzy prowincjonalni / Provincial Actors", one of the flagship pictures of the "cinema of moral disquiet". Early on she also directed theatre plays, sometimes with her husband, Laco Adamik. Her film "Gorączka / Fever" from 1980 was a success, but "Kobieta samotna / Lonely Woman", made a year later and critical of Poland's present, was stopped from showing by the authorities and could only be viewed at private and semi-private shows using illegal copies. When the martial law was declared in 1981, Holland, who was staying out of Poland, decided to emigrate. Her subsequent film were made abroad. In 2001 she was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Restitution of Poland for outstanding contribution to Polish culture. In 2002 she received the Special Orzeł (Eagle) Award for her consistent artistic achievement in Poland and abroad. She was also honoured for lifetime achievement at the 1999 Film Festival in Las Vegas.

Holland soon abandoned the poetic, somewhat surrealist style of her first films ("Grzech Boga / God's Sin", "Wieczór u Abdona") in favour of the experience of Czech cinema with its ironic, yet warm approach to the protagonist, its special realism reminiscent of documentaries (showing especially in "Dziewczyna i 'Akwarius' / Girl and Akwarius" and "Niedzielne dzieci / Sunday Children", respect for detail which was close to the cinéma-vérité, and unhurried plot. Holland herself admits to enchantment with the "mundane metaphysics" of Czech cinema ("Kino" 4/1991) and to fascination with Evald Schorm's documentaries and Jiri Nemec's feature films. Her "Zdjęcia Próbne / Screen Test" were obviously influenced by Milos Forman's "Konkurs / Talent Competition". "Kobieta samotna", the last film she made before the emigration, ended a period of artistic search.. Until then her films had surely been a "feeling mirror" reflecting key issues of the part of Europe whose culture and realities shaped Holland, wrote Mariola Jankun-Dopartowa ("Gorzkie kino Agnieszki Holland" [Agnieszka Holland's Bitter Cinema], 2000). Holland's later, émigré works used other means of expression and a different film language. Her films, to quote another researcher of her output, Sławomir Bobowski, became more "attractive in terms of the plot" and at the same time more distant from reality:

"When there is artistic freedom, the desire to reflect details of reality gets weaker" (" W poszukiwaniu siebie: twórczosc filmowa Agnieszki Holland [In Search of Oneself: The Films by Agnieszka Holland], 2001).

While pointing to the diversity of form and subject-matter of Holland's films, the quoted researchers as well as Stanisław Zawiślański, the author of "Reżyseria Agnieszki Holland" ("Agnieszka Holland's Direction", 1995), find a certain consistency in Holland's selection of topics and presentation of protagonists. In most general terms, hers is a vision of the world as a trap in which man, who is a mere toy in the hands of an unfeeling fate or a capricious God, struggles to give sense to his existence. The researchers call this trap of no escape "Kunderian", pointing to the relationship between Holland's film and Milan Kundera's prose. Holland came to know the Czech writer when she was a student in Prague. She translated into Polish "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and intended to adapt "The Farewell Party" for the screen.

"There is no happiness, living life to the full or fulfillment for her protagonists, just as there are no such things for Kundera's protagonists",

writes Bobowski. Indeed, the vision of the world as a trap appears already in Holland's poetic diploma work "Grzech Boga" and is very much present in her "cinema of the moral disquiet" films such as "Zdjęcia próbne" and "Niedzielne dzieci", becoming yet more marked in "Aktorzy prowincjonalni". While the latter production is a clear polemic with the then authorities and the communist propaganda's vision of reality - a trait shared with other films of "moral disquiet" - it has lost none of its relevance owing to its universal approach to existential issues.

The bitter tone and the vision of the world as a trap can also be found in "Gorączka", and are even more marked in "Kobieta samotna". Holland's films made in the West perpetuate this vision, the director continuing to portray people looking for ways out, striving for self-fulfillment, pursuing happiness and failing or being forced to satisfy themselves with a rather doubtful victory, like in "Washington Square", or a very costly one, like in "Europe Europe". Holland persists with her psychological penetration and existential parable, asking - to use her own reference - "a Gombrowicz-like question": how much we are what we are and how much we exist only through others' eyes.

It seems debatable whether Holland's tackling of issues which are universal and which have been dealt with by other artists is sufficient to call it a characteristic and individual trait. There is no doubt, however, that her artistic interests fall within a specific area.

Holland's recent films reveal a fascination with the metaphysical - besides the unflagging interest in the existential dimension of life. She mentioned the first "metaphysical touch" in the context of "Olivier Olivier" ("Kino" 11/1999). "The Third Miracle" and her latest picture, "Julie Walking Home" show a fascination with religious attitudes and the supernatural, rationally inexplicable phenomena. These interests of Holland's were also signaled by her directing of Szymon Ansky's "The Dybbuk" for the Polish TV theatre.

Then there is the issue of Holland's new film language, her new style of talking about reality. Her films are clearly drifting towards the popular cinema. Polish audience was first taken by surprise by her feature "To Kill a Priest". The story, set in Poland under the martial law, recounted the notorious assassination of Father Jerzy Popieluszko, but Holland's depiction of the Polish society and the psychological analysis of protagonists' behaviours were cliches regarded by critics (e.g. by Tadeusz Lubelski in his 1989 "Film na Świecie") as set in the "thriller poetics". This view is not shared by Mariola Jankun-Dopartowa, who believes that the kitsch-like artificiality of the film is intentional and that there are two layers in "To Kill a Priest": one a gloomy psychological drama, the other an analysis of how political and religious kitsch is born. Holland would have deliberately used the poetics of kitsch.

Holland's subsequent films, such as "Total Eclipse", "Washington Square", "The Third Miracle", "Shot in the Heart", left many critics skeptical of their language of the popular cinema. Jankun-Dopartowa, however, sees this language as a consistent implementation of an intention. She says, for instance, that while Holland uses the language of kitsch in "Total Eclipse", she treats it like Kundera, for whom kitsch is an "existential category" (a destructive one, too), and Holland "belongs to the same formation as Kundera. … The esthetics of kitsch proposed by Holland in this movie achieves perfection", writes Jankun-Dopartowa. According to her, it should please mass culture viewers and more discriminating audiences, though, admittedly, "sometimes both are disappointed".

There is no doubt that Holland deliberately started this risky game to win the so-called wide audience. She confesses ("Rzeczpospolita" of 8th June 2000) that she wants to make "cinema of the middle", understandable to the average spectator, yet "with a certain scale of complexity and some intellectual message".

Filmography

Director:

• 1970 "Hřich Boha / God's Sin" - screenplay based on Isaac Babel's short story of the same title. School diploma film.
  
  
• 1975 "Wieczór u Abdona / An Efvening at Abdon's" - TV film; screenplay based on a short story by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz.
  
  
• 1975 "Dziewczyna i 'Akwarius' / Girl and Akwarius" - TV film, one of the shorts in "Obrazki z życia / Life Scenes"; screenplay based on a column by Jerzy Urban.
  
  
• 1976 "Niedzielne dzieci / Sunday Children" - TV film from the series "Sytuacje rodzinne / Family Situations". Grand Prix at Milan's MIFED in 1976 and Gazeta Olsztyńska Prize at the 1st Festival of Polish Television Productions (FPTTV) in 1977.
  
  
• 1976 "Zdjęcia próbne / Screen Test" - co-directed with Paweł Kędzierski and Jerzy Domaradzki. Award for outstanding edifying values at the 1977 Lubuskie Film Summer in Łagów.
  
  
• 1977 "Coś za coś / This for That" - TV film from the series "Sytuacje rodzinne".
  
  
• 1978 "Aktorzy prowincjonalni / Provincial Actors" - co-writer of the screenplay (with Witold Zatorski). Grand Prix of the 7th "The Young and the Cinema" Film School in Koszalin in 1979 and FIPRESCI Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1980.
  
  
• 1980 "Gorączka / Fever" - co-writer of the screenplay (with K.T. Toeplitz) based on "Andrzej Strug"'s novel Dzieje jednego pocisku / The Story of One Bullet. Grand Prix (Golden Lions) for the best film at the 8th Gdańsk Film Festival in 1981.
  
  
• 1981 "Kobieta samotna / Lonely Woman" - co-writer of the screenplay (with Maciej Karpiński). Special Jury Award at the 13th Gdańsk Film Festival in 1988.
  
  
• 1982 "Les cartes postales de Paris" - TV documentary.
  
  
• 1985 "Kultura / Culture" - TV documentary.
  
  
• 1985 "Bittere Entre" - co-writer of the screenplay (with Paul Hengge) based on H.H. Field's and Stanisław Mierzeński's novels. Mention at the Montreal Film Festival in 1985 and an Academy Award nomination in the best foreign-language film category.
  
  
• 1988 "To Kill a Priest" - co-writer of the screenplay (with Jean-Yves Pitoun).
  
  
• 1990 "Europa Europa" - screenplay based on Salomon Perel's memoirs. Award for directing at the Viareggio Film Festival in 1990; 1992: award of the US National Society of Film Critics, Golden Globe for the best non-English language film and an Academy Award nomination for the best adapted screenplay; 1993: BAFA nomination for the best non-English language film.
  
  
• 1991 "Olivier, Olivier".
  
  
• 1993 "The Secret Garden" - screenplay written by Caroline Thompson after Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel.
  
  
• 1994 "Red Wind" - TV film from the series "Zbrodnie doskonałe / Perfect Crimes", based on Raymond Chandler's prose.
  
  
• 1995 "Total Eclipse" - screenplay written by Christopher Hampton from his play.
  
  
• 1997 "Washington Square" - screenplay written by Carol Doyle after Henry James' novel.
  
  
• 1999 "The Third Miracle" - screenplay written by John Romano i Richard Vetere.
  
  
• 2001 "Shot in the Heart" - screenplay written by Frank Pugliese after Mike Gilmore's novel.
  
  
• 2001 "Golden Dreams" - TV documentary feature produced for Disneyland, with Whoopi Goldberg narrating the history of California.
  
  
• 2002 "Julie Walking Home" - screenplay written with Roman Gren and Arlene Sarner.
  
  
• 2003 "Janosik" (unfinished) - directed with daughter Katarzyna Adamik after a screenplay by Eva Borusivicova.
  
  Agnieszka Holland has also written or co-written screenplays for films made by other directors, including: "Zwycięzcy / The Winners" - Andrzej Zajączkowski (1978); "Okruch lustra / A Sliver of Mirror" - Andrzej Zajaczkowski (1978); "Bez Znieczulenia / Rough Treatment" - Andrzej Wajda (1978); "Mężczyzna niepotrzebny / Unnecessary Man" - Laco Adamik (1982); "Danton" - Andrzej Wajda (1982); "Miłość w Niemczech / Love in Germany" - Andrzej Wajda (1983); "Anna" - Yurek Bogayewicz (1987); "Biesy / The Possessed" - Andrzej Wajda (1988); "La Amiga" - J. Meerapfel (1988); "Korczak" - Andrzej Wajda (1990); "Trzy kolory. Niebieski / Three Colours: Blue" - Krzysztof Kieślowski (1993).
  
  In the 1970s Holland directed plays for the Polish Television, notably "Lazaret / The Field Hospital" after her own screenplay and Szymon Ansky's "The Dybbuk" in 2000. In France she made a TV adaptation of Vaclav Havel's play "Largo Desolato" and in 1988 assisted Andrzej Wolski with directing the documentary "KOR / Workers' Defence Committee". She also did some acting, for instance in Krzysztof Zanussi's "Iluminacja / Illumination", Stanisław Latallo's "Pozwólcie nam do woli fruwac nad ogrodami / Let us Fly Over the Gardens", Krzysztof Kieślowski's "Blizna / The Scar", A. Zajączkowski's "Okruch lustra / A Sliver of a Mirror" and Ryszard Bugajski's "Przesłuchanie / Interrogation".
  
  Author: Ewa Nawój, 2003.
  
  
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