Film director, script writer, actor. Also a poet and painter. A boxer in his youth. Born in 1938 (some sources quote documents, which the director says are forged, giving 1936 as his year of birth).

He graduated in ethnography from Warsaw University in 1959, and in directing from the National Film and Theatre School (today's PWSFTviT) in Łódź in 1963. His etude "Boks / Boxing" won the Grand Prix at the International Sport Film Festival in Budapest in 1962. He debuted as a script writer in 1960 with the film "Niewinni czarodzieje / Innocent Sorcerers" (dir. Andrzej Wajda). His feature directing debut came in 1964 with "Rysopis / Identification Marks: None". This film was made in an unusual way, as it was compiled from several of the director's student films made over a period of time. Jerzy Skolimowski has lived and worked abroad since 1967, in Italy, Britain and the United States, spending the past 17 years in California. He has not made any films in over ten years, focusing on painting.

Jerzy Skolimowski has received numerous awards, including the Grand Prix at the International Art Film Festival in Bergamo in 1966 for the film "Bariera / Barrier", a Golden Bear for "Start / Le Départ" in 1967 at the IFF in Berlin, the Jury Prize for "Moonlighting" in Cannes in 1982. For "Rece do gory / Hands Up!", a film the censors banned for a long time, he received the journalists' prize at the 1981 Polish Feature Film Festival in Gdansk. In 2003 he received an "Eagle" (for 2002), an award presented to him for "the independent stance of a Polish creator of cinema of global dimensions, demonstrated in Poland and as an émigré, and for regular ties to Poland".

Before Jerzy Skolimowski debuted as a feature film director, he showed himself to be a talented script writer. In this role, he contributed substantially to two highly valued Polish films, Roman Polanski's "Nóż w wodzie / Knife in the Water" and Andrzej Wajda's "Innocent Sorcerers". The characters in both these films have a lot in common with the heroes of his own films, such as "Identification Marks: None", "Walkover" and "Barrier" which secured him a unique position in Polish cinema.

The mid-1960's saw the beginnings of a trend in Polish cinema that was dubbed - a little arbitrarily and rather mechanically - "the third Polish cinema". After the first film efforts after the war, which maintained the pre-war style, and after the account-settling "Polish school" of films made by people who had taken part in World War II, young artists entered the scene. They had been brought up after the war and their main experience was the post-war reality. They matured in the 1960's, a time called "the little stabilization". The first of them to deal with the present as experienced by Polish people at the time were documentary makers. Soon after, the same theme also appeared in feature films.

"This third cinema", wrote Jerzy Plażewski, "searches for the truth about itself, i.e. about the time of the communist stabilization which gave rise to moral problems related to settling down in life, and required people to define their attitude towards the world around them and its ethical norms". ("Historia filmu dla każdego" [A History of Film for Everyone], Warszawa 1977)

Jerzy Skolimowski deserves to be called the leading representative of this generation in Polish cinema. The protagonist of his first films did not gain the approval of those critics who expected films - in accordance with the expectations of the authorities - to present their subject matter in a social perspective, and who thought any individualism to be inappropriate. This was a hero, as Konrad Eberhardt put it, "who pushes maturity away", "who runs away from convention".

"There is a sizable amount of contrariness involved", wrote Konrad Eberhardt about Skolimowski's characters, "and anxiety as to how to save one's individuality, one's face, fear of melding into a community subordinated to overriding purposes. Hence a series of inconsistencies - aspirations on the one hand, laziness on the other, a desire to do something unusual and wasted university years, time lost doing nothing, opportunities thrown away". ("Kino" 13/1967)

Luckily today there is no need for such a verbal balancing act, aimed at throwing off the censors, to write well about Skolimowski's films from that time.

"The suspiciousness of some of the critics at the time", writes Tomasz Jopkiewicz, "is understandable. After all, this was an obvious attempt to escape the social rules while appearing to be ostentatiously surrendering to them. The most important thing was to preserve the imperfect 'sense of yourself', a stubborn and quiet refusal to recognize the uncomfortable primacy of the group". ("Kino" 7-8/2004)

And in the same article:

"Escaping, wandering at a loss, searching. Donning successive faces and masks. Seeking one's own form. At the same time, there is fear of irrevocably losing what is one's own, of it being taken away. Never giving up. A struggle for the right to err, to find and then lose anchorage, something relatively stable. These are the dilemmas torturing the heroes of Skolimowski's films. They were not new, and quite widespread in 1960's cinema. But it was this director, thanks to his personal style, who was best at extracting them. He turned to all that was unique, blurring the boundaries between biography and his hero, creating a kind of lyrical, strongly self-mocking diary".

The term "diary" is absolutely justified here. The plots of Skolimowski's films were largely autobiographical; the script writer and director rolled into one identified with the hero, and himself played the part of Andrzej Leszczyc in the first two films. He had to give this up in "Barrier", upon a firm request from a decision-making official.

His hero, spitefully and sometimes almost tenderly called "a mooner", was sometimes compared to characters from Godard's films, and similarities were also sought in the narration method. The "third cinema", its leading representative being Skolimowski, was sometimes called the "Polish New Wave", a reference to the French New Wave.

"The year 1966. The festival in Bergamo. This self-respecting festival, which also wanted to safely emphasize its solidarity with the avant-garde, could not have found a better candidate for its Grand Prix than Jerzy Skolimowski's 'Barrier'. This film was very much in the spirit of 'new cinema', already widely recognized at the time. It is not easy to specify the features of this trend. Roughly speaking, they were compatible with the output of Jean-Luc Godard, where observed reality was mixed with the director's own 'biased' statements - about himself, the world, and cinema", wrote Aleksander Jackiewicz. ("Moja filmoteka. Kino polskie" [My Film Library. Polish Cinema], Warszawa 1983)

In Skolimowski's films, Jackiewicz valued the same "faithfulness to the real world" that he found in Godard, but which the Polish director achieved - as Jackiewicz stressed - in his own unique way. Other critics also analysed Skolimowski's films in the context of the work of French directors.

"What links Skolimowski to the 'New Wave' style is his perception - an everyday, stern, documentary-like look that discovers the extraordinary, discovers poetry in the most ordinary moments of life, and imparts a previously unknown climate to any old chattels and situations". (Zygmunt Kałużyński, "Polityka" 51/1965)

Though still a part of the same trend, "Barrier", Skolimowski's third film after "Identification Marks: None" and "Walkover", presents a degree of moving away from filming with the aim of portraying reality towards the language of symbols. This is also a less personal film, perhaps because the director did not play the main role, a fact owed to political factors.

Skolimowski faced even greater problems with his next film, "Hands Up!". The authorities did not like the presented image of the generation of the Union of Polish Youth [ZMP, a youth organization closely affiliated with the communist party]. They took the greatest offence at a scene in which students put up a poster with a huge picture of Stalin and give it two pairs of eyes by mistake.

The film "Hands Up!" made in spring 1967 was banned by the censors for many years, only to be released, ironically enough, just before martial law was imposed [in 1981]. The problems Skolimowski had with this film became the main reason why he emigrated. Years later, he said:

"I feel aversion towards it, because it ruined my life" (interview granted to Joanna Pogorzelska, "Gazeta Wyborcza" 8 February 2001). "If it weren't for 'Hands Up!', I would probably still be a New Wave artist. Necessity forced me off that road", he said in the same interview.

Two films that Jerzy Skolimowski made during his first years abroad, "Le Départ" and "Deep End", seemed to define a new road.

"This is perhaps Skolimowski's most disciplined work", wrote Tomasz Jopkiewicz about "Deep End" in the article quoted earlier, "though it was free in tone at the same time. It proved he could give up 'Leszczyc' and excellently express the nuances of emotions as a delightful and exhausting game with a bitter result".

"Brilliant ideas for the storyline (especially in 'Deep End') condense the action poetically, define the situation, the character, the nature in the blink of an eye",

is how Jerzy Plażewski evaluated the Polish director's first émigré years in his compendium of film.

The director's searches were not as fruitful in subsequent films, however. Liberated from the political whip he had to consider in Poland, in the West he came against a different barrier. This was the necessity of considering - as Tomasz Jopkiewicz put it - the rules of the film industry, in an artist who performed best as the maker of intimate pictures.

"Despite all their faults, the most personal ones are the best, like 'Moonlighting' (1982) and 'Success Is the Best Revenge' (1984), which mark an attempt - in a different formula - to return to the intimate stories and experiences from the first period of his work",

wrote the above-mentioned critic, contrasting these films with the skilful adaptations that Skolimowski also made.

In his many interviews Jerzy Skolimowski appears as someone very critical about his own work, who dislikes some of his films rather strongly, sometimes too strongly, to mention the adaptation of Witold Gombrowicz's "Ferdydurke / 30 Door Key". The struggle Jan Jakub Kolski had with another novel by the same writer, whose work is not really translatable into film, where he moved quite substantially away from the literary original in order not to ruin the film completely, just goes to show that the failure of Skolimowski, who was more faithful to Gombrowicz, is not all that obvious.

After a period of silence as a filmmaker (most recently as long as 15 years!), acting in other people's films, and - not without success - painting, Skolimowski is returning to the camera, starting work this year on a film under the working title "America" (based on Susan Sontag's novel "In America"), which is planned as a disguised biography of Polish actress Helena Modrzejewska [Modjeska] and will tell the story of those years of her life she spent in the United States.

Filmography

Etudes:

• 1960 "Hamleś / Little Hamlet". A film joke referring to William Shakespeare's "Hamlet".
  
  
• 1960 "Oko wykol / The Menacing Eye". A man rocking on a horse throws knives at a woman standing against the wall. He misses. He tries again - and hits her wig.
  
  
• 1961 "Erotyk / Erotique". A girl wipes the mirror and suddenly notices the reflection of a man who then speaks to her. The girl backs away, afraid.
  
  
• 1961 "Pieniądze albo życie / Your Money or Your Life". Based on Stanisław Dygat's short story "Pięć tysięcy złotych" (S. Dygat plays one of the parts). The plot is set during the war. Two men at a shooting range; during an argument one of them confesses he is a Jew. The military police observe the scene from a distance.
  
  
• 1961 "Rzeźba / The Sculpture"
  
  
• 1961 "Druga Taryfa / Tariff Two" (script with Michał Elsner)
  
  
• 1961 "Boks / Boxing" (Awards: 1962 - Budapest, International Sport Film Festival - Grand Prix)
  
  
• 1962 "Akt / The Nude"

Feature films - director and script writer:

• 1964 "Rysopis / Identification Marks: None" (also set design). A young ichthyology student called Andrzej Leszczyc decides to give up his studies and join the army. This is meant to cure the existential lack of fulfilment in his life so far. Before he goes to the station from where he will set off for his military unit, he spends the day mooning about town, running errands, some of them important, some not, and meets a girl he thinks could become important to him. (Awards: 1964 - Warsaw, PWSTiF Film Festival - award for best director;1965 - Arnhem, IFF - Grand Prix for best director, together with the film "Walkover"; "Warsaw Mermaid" - Award of the Film Critics Club of the Association of Polish Journalists)
  
  
• 1965 "Walkower / Walkover". Two old acquaintances meet by accident. Both are about to fight against tough opponents, his is a boxing fight, hers is a struggle to have her original project implemented at a large industrial facility. They both have to solve the same dilemma: whether to take on the fight, which looks to be unequal, or lose it (and - symbolically - also life) by default. (Awards: 1965 - Andrzej Munk Award granted by PWSFTviT; Arnhem, IFF - Grand Prix for best director, together with the film "Identification Marks: None"; Mannheim, International Film Week - second prize in the feature debut category; 1966 - "Warsaw Mermaid" - Award of the Film Critics Club of the Association of Polish Journalists)
  
  
• 1966 "Bariera / Barrier". A student abandons his way of life and wanders, suitcase in hand, seeking a place in life, literally and metaphorically. Two attitudes clash in this character - resignation and a readiness to adjust to life according to the generally accepted pattern ("little stabilization"), and the remnants of youthful rebellion, refusal to accept a boring life centered around making money. (Awards: 1966 - Bergamo, International Art Film Festival - Grand Prix; 1968 - Valladolid, IFF - Jury Special Prize)
  
  
• 1967 (Prologue 1981) "Rece do góry / Hands Up!". Medical graduates meet years later at a reunion. Provoked by a telegram from one of their absent friends, they decide to visit him. For lack of another mode of transport, they choose a freight car. As the alcohol flows, they start reminiscing about their student days, and their time in the Union of Polish Youth [ZMP, a youth organization closely affiliated with the communist party]. The result is a series of mutual confessions, vivisections revealing the heroes' conformism. In the morning it turns out the freight car was shunted around the sidings all night, so this was only a symbolic, self-revealing journey into themselves. The Prologue, made years later, is a separate introduction, the director's reflection about the world, art, and film. (Awards: 1981 - Gdansk, Polish Feature Film Festival - Journalists' Award; Barcelona, IFF - Special Mention)
  
  
• 1967 "Le Départ / Start" (script with Andrzej Kostenko). A hairdresser apprentice dreams of a career as a rally driver. He meets the love of his life and abandons those dreams. (Awards: 1967 - Berlin, IFF - Golden Bear)
  
  
• 1968 "Dvadsatrocni / Dwudziestolatki / The Twenty-Year-Olds" in "Dialogue 20-40-60"
  
  
• 1970 "Deep End" (script with Jerzy Gruza and Boleslaw Sulik). An in-depth psychological study. The plot is set in a public bathhouse in London. A boy working as an attendant falls in love with an older girl, is disappointed with love, and has a nervous breakdown that ends in suicide.
  
  
• 1970 "The Adventures of Gerard" - the director collaborated (with Gene Gutowski and Henry Lester) on the script by H.A.L. Craig based on four stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. An adventure story from the Napoleonic era.
  
  
• 1971 "King, Queen, Knave" (script: David Shaw, David Seltzer, based on a novel by Vladimir Nabokov). A crime comedy with elements of fantasy. Martha wants her husband dead so that she can enjoy her inheritance with his nephew who is her lover. The murder plan fails and Martha herself is killed, not her husband. It turns out that a brilliant inventor living nearby has made a doll that is a faithful copy of Martha.
  
  
• 1978 "The Shout" (script with Michael Austin - based on the story by Robert Graves). The quiet life of a composer and his wife is disturbed by a mentally ill man they have invited to their home, who has an extraordinary power - his shout can kill. (Awards: 1982 - IFF, Cannes - Jury Special Prize)
  
  
• 1982 "Moonlighting" (script in association with Boleslaw Sulik, Danuta Stok, Witold Stok). The year is 1981. Some Poles are working illegally in Britain as a renovation crew. One of them learns that martial law has been imposed in Poland, and decides to keep this a secret until his colleagues, who do not know any English and are thus cut off from information, complete the work. (Awards: 1982 - Cannes, IFF - prize for best script)
  
  
• 1984 "Success is the Best Revenge" (director with Andrzej Kostenko, script with his son Michał Skolimowski - credited as Michael Lyndon). The script was based on son Michał's personal notes expressing his alienation from his British peers.
  
  
• 1985 "The Lightship" (script: William Mai, David Taylor) (Awards: 1985 - Venice, IFF - Jury Special Prize and an award from the Union of Italian Film Journalists for the best foreign film)
  
  
• 1989 "Torrents of Spring" (script with Arcangelo Bonaccorso - based on the novel by Ivan Turgenev). The 1840's. The story of a young Russian aristocrat's passion for a married woman.
  
  
• 1991 "30 Door Key" (script with sons: Michał - credited as John Yorick, and Jerzy Jr - credited as Joseph Key, based on Witold Gombrowicz's novel "Ferdydurke"). Summer 1939. The 30-year-old protagonist Józio relapses into childhood and has to experience the oppression involved in being back at school, the constraint of conventional teaching embodied by Prof. Pimko, and the tortures of puberty. The grotesque form serves to expose and ridicule the moral and cultural models of the time.
  
  
• 2006 "America" (working title) - in production.

Feature films - script:

• 1960 "Niewinni czarodzieje / Innocent Sorcerers" (dir. Andrzej Wajda) script with Jerzy Andrzejewski
  
  
• 1961 "Nóż w wodzie / Knife in the Water" (dir. Roman Polanski) script with Roman Polanski and Jakub Goldberg
  
  
• 1972 "Poślizg / A Slip-Up" (dir. Jan Łomnicki)
  
  
• 1986 "Mesmerized" (dir. Michael Laughlin) script with M. Laughlin

Jerzy Skolimowski has also been an actor in his own films: "Identification Marks: None", "Walkover", "Hands Up!", "Deep End", "The Shout", "Torrents of Springs", "30 Door Key".

He has appeared in the films of other directors: "Sposób bycia / A Frame of Mind" (1965), dir. Jan Rybkowski, "A Slip-Up" (1972), dir. Jan Łomnicki, "Die Fulschung" (1981), dir. Volker Schlöndorff, "White Nights" (1985), dir. Taylor Hackford, "Big Shots" (1987), dir. Robert Mandel, "Mars Attacks!" (1996), dir. Tim Burton, "L.A. Without a Map" (1998), dir. Mika Kaurismaki, "Operacja Samum" (1999), dir. Władysław Pasikowski, "Before Night Falls" (2000), dir. Julian Schnabel.

He was the producer of "Moonlighting" and "Success is the Best Revenge", and a co-producer of "30 Door Key" and "The Hollow Men" (directed by his sons Michal and Jerzy, who were credited under pseudonyms).

At the Teatr Studio in Warsaw Jerzy Skolimowski directed Ariel Dorfman's play "Death and the Maiden" (1992) and acted in it as well.

Jerzy Skolimowski has been the subject of documentaries: "Rysopis Skolimowskiego [Skolimowski's Identification Marks]" (1992), dir. Jerzy Kolat, and "Introwizje. Jerzy Skolimowski [Introvisions. Jerzy Skolimowski]" (2005), dir. Leszek Orlewicz.

Author: Ewa Nawój, April 2006

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