DHC for Kazimierz Kutz and Jerzy Wójcik
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05. 12. 2018.
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The Senate of the Lodz Film School has decided to grant the honorary titles to the Icons of the Polish Cinema. The ceremony takes place on 13 December, 2018, at 12:00

This will be a very important moment for the School - the honorary title will be awarded to two from among the first graduates of the Lodz Film School whose creative path deserves the highest recognition and admiration. In early 1950ties, Kazimierz Kutz, a direction student met a cinematography student, Jerzy Wójcik, at the film school. For the first time they worked together on the set of a full-length feature film thanks to Andrzej Wajda - Kazimierz Kutz was the assistant director and Jerzy Wójcik – the assistant director of photography. In 1958 they worked together again as the director and DOP team on the film "Krzyż walecznych" and two years later they made the film "Nikt nie woła" – today regarded as one of the most original and vividly sublime Polish films, which was in its artistic vision ahead of the time of its premiere. "(…)that wonderful aesthetic excess, which in 1960 introduced Polish film to the global canon of a new cinema (which in Poland brought about a regrettable ostracism of the film community towards him (Kutz - ed. Red) - writes in the review of Kazimierz Kutz's achievements, Prof. Andrzej Gwóźdź. And it will be this joint film masterpiece of Kutz and Wójcik that we will screen on the Day of the honorary titles being granted to the two artists.

„Kutz. Why Kutz? Isn’t it obvious? Over half a century of artistic work. A hundred of full length feature projects for cinema, television and theatre. Life Achievement Honorary Eagle Award of the Polish Film Academy. Platinum and Golden Lions of Gdańsk – Gdynia Festival. Author of numerous books. Our graduate – wrote in the laudatory speech the promoter in the proceeding for the title of DHC granting - Piotr Mikucki, Dean of the Film and Television Directing Department.
"The sixty-year presence of Kazimierz Kutz in Polish film culture is in itself a phenomenal sensation. Kutz remains, in fact, the only active artist who carries on his shoulders almost the entire history of post-war Polish cinema, a considerable amount of time in the existence of the Television Theatre and live theatre. And in a way, after all, it's also his film work consisting of twenty-one titles makes him responsible for the Polish cinema” – writes Andrzej Gwóźdź. The creator of over twenty award-winning feature films, among them "Nikt nie woła" (1960), Silesian trylogy: "Sól ziemi czarnej" (1969), "Perła w koronie" (1971) and "Paciorki jednego różańca" (1979); "Śmierć jak kromka chleba" (1994), "Zawrócony" (1994); film and theatre director, screenwriter; emphatically and accurately captivating in the works and in his comments the reality surrounding him, and above all loving Silesia where his origins are. "Kazimierz Kutz is an outstanding director with his own artistic and ideological identity. He is also an extremely witty and malicious person whose features many people have been afraid of up to now" – writes Filip Bajon in his review.

It is impossible to overestimate Jerzy Wójcik's contribution to Polish cinema either. "What would be the Polish cinema without "Eroika", "Ashes and Diamonds", "Mother Joanna from the Angels", "Pharaoh" or "Westerplatte"? To each of these memorable films he had his own creative contribution. That's not all, as a completely different canonical alternative set can be arranged out of the films whose director of photography is Jerzy Wójcik, for example: "Godzina bez słońca", "Nikt nie woła", "Przy torze kolejowym", "Echo", "Medaliony", "Twarzą w twarz", "Potop", "Pasja", "Opadły liście z drzew", "Kobieta w kapeluszu". And, by mentioning this, we are far from exhausting the register of outstanding works that came out of his hand" writes Prof. Marek Hendrykowski.  "Jerzy Wójcik shows us that the visible in cinema serves the purpose to tell about the invisible and registers the film space and time in the way which opens the internal space, the spirit space" - says Jolanta Dylewska, promoter in the procedure for awarding the title to the outstanding cinematographer. The master of the camera he worked with such directors as: Jerzy Hoffman, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Kazimierz Kutz, Janusz Morgenstern, Andrzej Munk, Stanisław Różewicz and Andrzej Wajda. As the Lodz Film School lecturer and our Professor he educated a few generations of excellent cinematographers. "Very soon, Jerzy Wójcik became a mentor, an authority for whose final opinion we always waited in suspense" writes Prof. Zbigniew Wichłacz. Love between the School and Jerzy Wójcik has been reciprocal: "The most important day in my life was the one in which I was admitted to the Film School. Because accepting me there meant that I crossed a certain threshold and could be educated in the profession of a filmmaker. It was the beginning of everything for me" - said in a conversation in the FILMPRO magazine.

The full contents of the laudation in the proceedings for the award of the Doctor Honoris Causa titles -written by the promoters Piotr Mikucki and Jolanta Dylewska - will be presented during the ceremony of awarding the titles to Kazimierz Kutz and Jerzy Wójcik on December 13 at 12.00 in the Film Studio (building Z). The ceremony has an open character.