Witold Giersz: Passion and Charm
 |
He has made nearly fifty films, for which he has received over sixty awards and distinctions at a number of prestigious festivals such as Cannes, Cork, Honolulu, Oberhausen, Paris, Tehran, Turin, Kraków and Poznań. Last year, on his eightieth birthday, the Association of Polish Filmmakers gave him a special prize for his lifetime achievements. This year, which was announced the Year of Polish Animation by the Polish Film Institute, Minister of Culture and National Heritage presented him with the Gloria Artis medal for exceptional services to Polish culture. Witold Giersz, the classic of not only Polish but also world animation, will be a special guest of this year’s International Young Audience Film Festival Ale Kino! In his prolific artistic output children’s film means a lot and is extremely important.
 |
Although an economist by education, he started working in the film industry at the age of 23. At first he worked as a cartoonist at the Animated Films Studio in Bielsko-Biała, and since1956 in Warsaw, where he was one of the founders of the studio’s branch transformed in 1958 into the SMF studio. He learnt the ropes of animation directly on the film set, during the filmmaking process, using a trial and terror approach, like the French New Wave filmmakers before him. Only later, in the 1970s, he rounded out his professional education with a course in directing at the National Film, Television & Theatre School in Łódź.
As a director he debuted in 1956 with Tajemnica starego zamku (Mystery of the Old Castle), a suspense story written by Zbigniew Lengren about a detective called Rex, who, after a painstaking investigation, catches a thief of precious stones and kidnapper of a kitten. The hero of his next film, W dżungli (In the Jungle, 1957), is a butterfly collector unexpectedly attacked by a tiger but helped by monkeys with unconventional ideas. The same jungle scenery was used by Giersz in the series Czarny błysk (The Black Flash) made thirty years later in the TV Studio of Animation Films in Poznań. Another adventure film Przygoda marynarza (The Sailor’s Adventure, 1958) was set on an (apparently) desert island, where the sailor managed to escape malevolent cannibals using a clever ruse and this way cheated death.
The first Giersz’s films were made by means of a traditional drawing technique. A breakthrough came with the film Mały western (Little Western, 1961), a parody of a ‘grown-up’ western full of witty gags and surprising twists and turns of plot. Fascinated with colour as film material, Giersz gave up drawing for the so-called motion painting, which has dominated his works since then. “It would be hard to say when I started seeing colour as a film character. Slowly, however, there was growing dislike in me for the traditional cartoon, whose all possibilities have been exhausted, and at the same time I felt more and more attracted by the idea of making a film with colour as its dominant feature," he said in one of his interviews three years later. He started painting on cels by animating a free spot of colour, and with great results. The best example of that was Czerwone i czarne (Red and Black, 1963), a humorous story full of suspense about a conflict between two colours, one of them personalised as toreador and the other one as a bull.
 |
He brought the motion painting technique almost to perfection in Koń (The Horse, 1967), an enchanting story of a free steed which wins the struggle with a man who tries to tame him, and in Pożar (Fire, 1975), a dramatic impressionistic work depicting wildlife in the forest where a serious fire breaks out. For the latter film he won the Prize of the Polish Television at the first Festival of Polish Films for Children and Young People in Poznań in 1969.
Among his single films, one which is particularly impressive is the film Gwiazda (The Star, 1985) made just after the end of the martial law period in Poland. It is a Christmas story full of poetry and reverie, based on the musical performance Kolęda nocka (Christmas Carol Tale) by Ernest Bryll and Wojciech Trzciński. A star appears in the sky. It flies high above villages and a huge city, bringing hope to some people and anxiety to others. It floats over continents, drawing people away from the dullness of everyday life. Santa Claus sets off and others join in. Everyone follows the star... This is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and touching films in the history of Polish animation.
A phenomenon worth noting among Giersz’s works is the so-called animated educational film for young audiences, which, thanks to its attractive entertaining formula, introduced children to the world of knowledge. A few examples are: Dinozaury (Dinosaurs, 1963), which teaches about the wildlife of prehistoric times in a simple way, and Kłopoty z ciepłem (Troubles with Heat, 1964) about thermoregulation in reptiles, birds and mammals, illustrated with a series of funny cartoon anecdotes, both simple and visually clear, usually rounded off with brilliantly surprising gags.
 |
Rapid development of television in the 1960s resulted in the growing interest of this medium in animation, especially in animation for children. Owing to the specific character of television there was a great demand for series. The structure of production in all animated film studios changed completely. From 1961, when the first animated children’s series Jacek Śpioszek (Jack the Sleepyhead) was made in the SMF studio in Warsaw, television series outnumbered single films, which were pushed onto the sidelines. Witold Giersz made two episodes of this pioneering series: W piaskach pustyni (In the Sands of the Desert) and Podarta książka (The Torn Book). Other items in his filmography are: Madame Soprani (1963), one episode of a detective series Na tropie...(On the Track of…), a few episodes of Czarny Błysk (The Black Flash, 1986-1991) mentioned above, but, first of all, Proszę słonia (Please, Mr. Elephant, 1968), a series based on the bestseller book by Ludwik Jerzy Kern about adventures of a china elephant, which grew and went alive because of vitamin pills he was fed with by a little boy (ten years later the series material was used to make a full-time cinema film, which was awarded Bronze Goats by the filmmakers’ jury and honourable mention by the children’s jury at the 1979 Festival of Polish Films for Children and Young People in Poznań).
Poznań occupies a special place in Witold Giersz’s life. He is a regular visitor to Poznań’s festivals, both as a prizewinner and a jury member awarding prizes to others. Also in this city, in the TV Studio of Animation Films, which he managed in the years 1985-1992, he made a number of excellent films, such as Rondo Alla Turca (1993) and W grocie króla gór (In the Hall of the Mountain King) - two impressive visual interpretations of well-known classical music pieces, as well as Żywa woda (The Water of Life, 2003), a part of a very interesting recent series Baśnie i bajki polskie (Polish Fairy Tales and Stories).
I have had a chance to watch Witold Giersz working. A few years ago he appeared in an episode of my TV cycle Anima. We have often worked together as jury members at various festivals (also in Poznań). I have had an opportunity to see him enjoying himself, for example during a reception held in Wrocław a few months ago to open the Year of Polish Animation, when he was unrivalled in rock’n’roll dancing even by those a few generations younger. Witold Giersz is excellent at everything he does. Moreover, he does everything with passion and, just as importantly, with a lot of charm.
Jerzy Armata