Andrzej Munk

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Andrzej Munk (born October 16, 1921 in Krakow , Poland ; † September 20, 1961 near Łowicz , Poland) was a Polish director and cameraman .

Life

Munk's grave in Warsaw

Munk was in Krakow born and ended shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War the school . During the occupation by the National Socialists , he moved to Warsaw . He took on a false name as he had to hide because of his Jewish ancestry. In Warsaw he worked as a construction worker. He took part in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and, after its suppression, fled to Krakow and then on to Kasprowy Wierch , where he worked as a keeper for a cable car. With the end of the war he returned to Warsaw and began studying at the Warsaw University of Technology . He broke off this course and began to study law at the University of Warsaw . He then moved to Łódź to study at the newly founded Łódź Film School . In 1948 he joined the Polish United Workers' Party ( Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza ). He graduated from college in 1951 and started working as a cameraman for the Polish Newsreel ( Polska Kronika Filmowa ). A few short films and documents by Munk date from this period. In 1952 Munk had to give up his party membership due to "non-normative behavior".

On September 20, 1961, he died in a car accident on his way from Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp , where he shot his last film The Passenger ( Pasażerka ), which Witold Lesiewicz finished in 1963 and which was shown in competition at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival . There Munk received the FIPRESCI Prize and a special mention by the jury for his entire work. He is buried in the Powązki Cemetery ( Cmentarz powązkowski ) in Warsaw .

His best-known works included the drama The Man on the Rails ( Człowiek na torze ) , based on the films Rashomon - Das Lustwäldchen and Citizen Kane , from 1957, as well as the one made in the same year, at the time of the careful liberalization under Władysław Gomułka , in the Second World War II double film Eroica about the Polish understanding of heroism and virtue.

Since 1965, the Łódź Film School has awarded the Andrzej Munk Film Prize for the best debut of a graduate.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Munk, Andrzej
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish director and cameraman
DATE OF BIRTH October 16, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Krakow , Poland
DATE OF DEATH 20th September 1961
Place of death Łowicz , Poland