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Personal life

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Earnings in Polish cinematography
Andrzej Wajda Film-maker
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Żeby wyżyć, żeby przeżyć rok, musiałem robić film co roku. Nie miałem żadnych innych źródeł utrzymania. Filmy dawały bardzo niewiele pieniędzy. Za Popiół i diament dostałem – mam to nawet do dzisiaj w moim archiwum – dostałem 37 tysięcy, samochód kosztował wtedy – taki, który ja mogłem kupić, żebym nie dostał od ministra, tylko żebym kupił na rynku – kosztował około 120 tysięcy. Pamiętam, że wtedy pojawiła się francuska Simca, która była naszym marzeniem, no to ja nie miałem 120 tysięcy. Kupiłem starą, używaną za sto, uskładałem tam już z jakiś następnych filmów. Ale jeżeli się mówi o tym, że kinematografia w krajach socjalistycznych była kinematografią za pieniądze państwa, to powiem, że to nie jest prawda. To my, to za nasze pieniądze te filmy powstawały. To my, tak mało zarabiając, dawaliśmy szansę państwu, że nawet jeżeli te filmy były tak źle dystrybuowane – a wtedy wielka publiczność przecież – źle dystrybuwane pod tym względem, że jeżeli 'kino jest dla nas najważniejsze' – Lenin, to bilet do kina musiał kosztować tyle, co pudełko zapałek. Nawet nie tyle, co pudełko papierosów. W związku z tym no trudno było żądać, żeby te filmy się zwracały. One były przedmiotem jakby... takie było postanowienie i nawet jak powoli rosła cena biletu, to ona rosła tak minimalnie, że... że... ale te filmy były zrobione za bezcen. Nasza praca nie kosztowała nic. Jeżeli jak mówię, ja zarabiałem na filmie jedną trzecią wartości samochodu, no to ile zarabiali ci koledzy, którzy stali za kamerą, ile zarabiali... ile zarabiała cała reszta? To w ogóle...

Moja żona Krystyna Zachwatowicz lata później, już w latach siedemdziesiątych, zagrała w filmie Panny z Wilka rolę, za którą sobie kupiła sweter w bardzo eleganckim magazynie w Warszawie. Ale to było wszystko. W związku z tym to nie państwo kładło pieniądze na produkcję filmu, tylko my po prostu pracowaliśmy tak tanio. Tanie były też materiały i w związku z tym każdy z tych filmów lepiej czy gorzej zwracał się na polskim rynku, a co dopiero te kilkadziesiąt filmów czy kilkaset filmów, które wyszły na świat, które przynosiły... przeliczenie tego dolara  przecież było obłąkane zupełnie. W związku z tym to nie jest prawda, żeśmy robili filmy za państwowe pieniądze. Dużo z tych filmów oczywiście było nieudanych i przepadały, ale te filmy udane na pewno, że tak powiem, rekompensowały w sensie finansowym ich powstanie. Myślę, że to jest dosyć ważne, bo ten slogan często nam powtarzają i rzucają nam w oczy, a to nie jest prawda.

To survive, to have enough money to last me through the year, I had to make one film per year. I had no other source of income. Film-making didn't bring in much money. For Ashes and Diamonds I got - I have the contract to this day in my records - 37,000. A car, the kind that I could buy for myself and not get it from a minister, but could buy on the open market, cost around 120,000. The French-manufactured Simca came on the market then and we all dreamed about owning one, but I didn't have 120,000. I bought a used one for 100 which I saved up for from the next films I made. But if anyone says that cinematography in socialist countries was state-funded, I have to say that wasn't true. Those films were paid for by us. We, the poorly paid, gave the state the opportunity, even if these films were so badly distributed in this respect that if 'cinema matters the most to us' according to Lenin, then a cinema ticket had to cost the same as a box of matches, not even as much as a packet of cigarettes. In the light of this, it was hard to expect these films to make any returns. They were an object, this was the decision, and even when the price of tickets gradually went up, the increase was so minimal that the films were being made for nothing. Our work cost nothing. If I earned one-third of the cost of a car, then how much could the director of photography be earning? How much did any of the others earn? Years later, my wife, Krystyna Zachwatowicz, was in a film in the '70s called The Young Girls of Wilko. She used her earnings to buy herself a sweater in a very elegant shop in Warsaw. But that was all. Therefore, it wasn't that the state laid out money for production of a film, it was that we worked for so little pay. The materials were also cheap and so each film paid for itself more or less on the Polish market, to say nothing of the many films which were released internationally. The exchange rates for the dollar were totally crazy. Therefore, it's not true that we made films that were state-funded. Many films were obviously failures and sank without a trace but those that were successful... they undeniably compensated their creation in financial terms. I think this is quite important because this slogan is often quoted at us, but it isn't true.

Polish film director Andrzej Wajda (1926-2016) was a towering presence in Polish cinema for six decades. His films, showing the horror of the German occupation of Poland, won awards at Cannes and established his reputation as both story-teller and commentator on Poland's turbulent history. As well as his impressive career in TV and film, he also served on the national Senate from 1989-91.

Listeners: Jacek Petrycki

Cinematographer Jacek Petrycki was born in Poznań, Poland in 1948. He has worked extensively in Poland and throughout the world. His credits include, for Agniezka Holland, Provincial Actors (1979), Europe, Europe (1990), Shot in the Heart (2001) and Julie Walking Home (2002), for Krysztof Kieslowski numerous short films including Camera Buff (1980) and No End (1985). Other credits include Journey to the Sun (1998), directed by Jesim Ustaoglu, which won the Golden Camera 300 award at the International Film Camera Festival, Shooters (2000) and The Valley (1999), both directed by Dan Reed, Unforgiving (1993) and Betrayed (1995) by Clive Gordon both of which won the BAFTA for best factual photography. Jacek Petrycki is also a teacher and a filmmaker.

Tags: Ashes and Diamonds, Young Girls of Wilko, Lenin, Krystyna Zachwatowicz

Duration: 3 minutes, 20 seconds

Date story recorded: August 2003

Date story went live: 24 January 2008