Jerzy Duszynski Movies

Janusz Kijowski wrote and directed Index, based on a story by Andrzej Pastuszek and meant to be released in 1977 -- until it was banned. Four more years would elapse before Index received its first restricted viewing in Warsaw, and on the heels of that showing, the film premiered in Cannes. Censorship came down hard because the message within the story might have been interpreted by some as a criticism against the Polish state. In March of 1968, an idealistic student loudly protests when a fellow student is expelled from the university on trumped-up charges. Rather than stick with a scholastic system lacking in minimal moral standards, the student dumps everything and leaves, losing his girlfriend, his career objectives, his friends, and his housing. He ends up delivering coal and while in that job, sees a fellow worker die in an accident. Upset at that event, he writes it up as a compelling true story and sends it in to a state publisher -- only to be thwarted again when the publisher demands changes he cannot ethically make. Just because he has stayed with his ideals -- which are not extreme -- he has no friends and not much of a life. After a while, his essay is interpreted in a film version that is an instant success -- and the student is left to ponder the vagaries of fate as his perpetual rejection by others is overturned through no effort of his own. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

As directed by Aleksander Ford in 1952, this Polish-language period drama chronicles the life, times and accomplishments of revered Warsaw-born Romantic composer Frederic Chopin, here played by Czeslaw Wollejko (Danton). The feature focuses exclusively on the youth of Chopin (who died at age 39), spanning his 15th year (c. 1825) through his 21st year (c. 1831); it also depicts Chopin as both prodigiously gifted and one filled with a tremendous spirit of Polish nationalism. Ford concludes with the onset of the illness that eventually killed Ford, set against the backdrop of the famous November Uprising in 1830. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi