When Director Andrzej Wadja passed away last fall, his career wasn't give the notice his extraordinary career merited. His post-war trilogy (A GENERATION, KANAL and ASHES AND DIAMONDS) is one the finest in World Cinema. Over two decades later his MAN OF MARBLE and MAN OF IRON (contextualizing the rise of the Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement) comprise one of the greatest double features I have ever seen. If he had only made those five films, Wadja's place in the history of European cinema would be secure. But, he made a number of other superb films including DANTON and A LOVE IN Germany.
AFTERIMAGE isn't at that level, but, it's a good solid work, and a fitting epitaph to his career. It's a biography of Russian-Polish artist Władysław Strzemiński who struggled during the rise of communism in post-war Poland. It's a fittingly symbolic end for Wadja's filmography, for the Director's first feature (A GENERATION) was made only a couple of years after Strzemiński's death. And, like the artist in AFTERIMAGE, Wadja's own work inspired a 'generation' of Polish Directors to come such as Polanski and Skolominski. In AFTERIMAGE it is explained that the term means the image in one own's eye that remains after one views a work of art. So too, for me, and for other's inspired by Wadja's art, this movie serves as a lasting afterimage of his work.
AFTERIMAGE isn't at that level, but, it's a good solid work, and a fitting epitaph to his career. It's a biography of Russian-Polish artist Władysław Strzemiński who struggled during the rise of communism in post-war Poland. It's a fittingly symbolic end for Wadja's filmography, for the Director's first feature (A GENERATION) was made only a couple of years after Strzemiński's death. And, like the artist in AFTERIMAGE, Wadja's own work inspired a 'generation' of Polish Directors to come such as Polanski and Skolominski. In AFTERIMAGE it is explained that the term means the image in one own's eye that remains after one views a work of art. So too, for me, and for other's inspired by Wadja's art, this movie serves as a lasting afterimage of his work.