The 15th Warsaw Jewish Film Festival is dedicated to Jerzy Hoffman, who will be awarded the Honorary Camera of David in appreciation for his contribution to Polish cinema and his unique sensitivity to Jewish subjects.
JERZY HOFFMAN
Polish film director and screenwriter born in 1932 in Krakow, in a family of doctors. In 1940 he was deported to Siberia. He returned to Poland after the war. Hoffman graduated from the All-Russian State University of Cinematography in Moscow. He debuted in 1954 with the documentary "Are You Among Them", created together with Edward Skórzewski, with whom he collaborated for many years, thus shaping the so-called Polish School of Documentary. In 1959 Hoffman’s "Colonel Wołodyjowski", the first of his great historical movies, hit the screens. "The Deluge”, shot 5 years later, was nominated for an Academy Award and "With Fire and Sword" was the most popular film in Poland after 1989. Apart from great historical movies, Hoffman also directed an important film about Polish-Jewish relations and the history of Polish Jews. In "
According to the Decrees of Providence”, he focused on subject of rescuing Jews during the Holocaust and the attitude of Poles towards a fugitive from the Warsaw ghetto. In 1964, Hoffman and Skórzewski shot the film "
The Law and the Fist”, an adaptation of Józef Hen’s novel "Toast”. It is the story of a former prisoner of a concentration camp (played by Gustaw Holoubek), who after the liberation arrives to the so-called Recovered Territories and has to adapt to the new reality of postwar Poland. Jerzy Hoffman received several dozen awards, prizes and distinctions, among them the Officer’s Cross of Polonia Restituta and the Medal for Merit to Culture "Gloria Artis”.
Jerzy Hoffman’s movies in the festival program:
Selected filmography:
- 1962 - "Gangsters and Philanthropists"
- 1964 - "The Law and the Fist"
- 1965 - "Three Steps on Earth"
- 1967 - "Father"
- 1969 - "Colonel Wołodyjowski"
- 1974 - "The Deluge"
- 1976 - "Leper"
- 1978 - "To the Last Drop of Blood"
- 1982 - "Quack"
- 1983 - "According to the Decrees of Providence"
- 1992 - "Beautiful Stranger"
- 1999 - "With Fire and Sword”
- 2003 - "An Ancient Tale: When the Sun was a God"
- 2010 - "1920. Battle of Warsaw"
