Published on April 1, 2026
This Tuesday, the first session of the first International Film Festival of Barcelona-Sant Jordi took place, focusing on the last film made Andrzej Wajda before his passing: *Afterimage*.
The festival director, José María Aresté, introduced the event, and I summarized my speech before the discussion.
*The Last Days of the Artist: Afterimage* is truly a masterpiece that carries a certain autobiographical aspect linked to its creator, inspired struggles of Polish avant-garde painter Wladyslaw Strzeminski between 1948 and 1952.
Andrzej Wajda (1926-2016) was one of the greatest and most veteran filmmakers from Eastern Europe, remaining active until he was 90 years old. A fighter in the Resistance during World War II, he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and graduated as a director from the prestigious Łódź Film School. As an assistant to pioneering director Aleksandr Ford, he became a leading figure in the “new wave” of Polish cinema during the 1960s. He gained recognition with his famous trilogy: *Generation* (1954), *Kanal* (1956), and *Ashes and Diamonds* (1958), addressing the Warsaw Uprising and Resistance. At that time, he expressed his admiration for and influence and film noir, stating, “We did not work within the framework of socialist realism at all.”
During the 1960s, he delved into literary adaptations, showcasing a full artistic talent filled with poetic nuances and extreme sensitivity. Wajda’s creative universe is complex, merging romanticism—sometimes described as wild—and baroque expressionism with critical realism of a nationalist character, straddling the line between materialism and humanism that distinguished him as an author. He enjoyed juxtaposing themes of love and death, heroism and madness. With an oeuvre marked , haunted war and focused on Poland’s past—such as his film about the Industrial Revolution, *The Land of Great Promise* (1975)—Wajda served as a witness to the uncertainties of historical present. He seamlessly combined his prolific filmmaking career (44 films over 60 years) with stage and television directing.
A critic of leftist totalitarianism with his famous film *Man of Marble* (1977), he boldly displayed dissent in *Man of Iron* (1981), championing the Solidarity labor movement. He further challenged the communist regime with the allegory *Danton* (1982), which he had to shoot in France after his Polish production company was declared illegal and he was even detained ’s government.
In 1990, when Lech Wałęsa became the president of Poland, Wajda returned to film and produced notable works including *Katyn* (2007), depicting the massacre that claimed the lives of over 20,000 Polish military personnel and civilians—one of whom was his father—murdered during World War II, a crime that had been attributed to the Nazis. His final films included *Walesa: Man of Hope* (2013) and *Powidoki* (2016). In 2000, he received an honorary Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
*Afterimage* (translated from *Powidoki*) is undoubtedly a masterpiece that beautifully narrates the final years of an exceptional artist, Wladyslaw Strzeminski (1893-1952), skillfully embodied —one of Poland’s greatest actors. The film offers a reflection on artistic creation while addressing themes of freedom and its consequences within the historical context (1948-1952) and the confrontation between a brilliant master and the Soviet regime during Stalin’s era, which sought to impose socialist realism on contemporary art.
Moreover, Wajda’s film explores the theory of unism, formulated the 1920s, without mentioning that his paintings inspired the musical compositions of Zygmunt Krauze, part of the revolutionary artists’ collective “a.r.” based in Łódź, which included his wife, sculptor Katarzyna Kobro, and also references his book *The Theory of Vision*, texts compiled , as depicted in the film. Strzeminski, who served as a professor and instructor in plastic arts, would later be reclaimed, and his legacy is embodied in the name of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź.
We can now open the discussion with topics proposed : artistic avant-gardes; creative freedom in authoritarian regimes; artistic creation in the service of ideologies: is it a form of art?; survival and maintenance of personal convictions or how to live : “primum vivere, deinde philosophare”; reconciling professional and family life; and how biographical narratives are approached in cinema.
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