Success Is the Best Revenge

Jerzy Skolimowski is a Polish film director, screenwriter, dramatist and actor. A graduate of the prestigious National Film School in Łódź, Skolimowski has directed more than twenty films since his 1960 début Oko wykol . He lived in Los Angeles for over 20 years where he... painted in a figurative, expressionist mode and acted occasionally in films. More recently, he returned to Poland, and to film making as a writer and director after a 17 year hiatus with Cztery noce z Anną in 2008. Skolimowski was born in Łódź, Poland, the son of Maria and Stanisław Skolimowski, an architect. He often recognized indications in his work to a childhood ineradicably scarred by the War. As a small child he witnessed the brutalities of war, even having been rescued from the rubble of a bombed-out house in Warsaw. His father, a member of the Polish Resistance, was executed by the Nazis. His mother hid a Jewish family in the house and Skolimowski recalls being required to take candy from the Nazis to maintain appearances. After the war, his mother became the cultural attaché of the Polish embassy in Prague.
more