THE MASTER HAS PASSED AWAY. MARCEL ŁOZIŃSKI HAS DIED
Marcel Łoziński died at the age of 85. A legend of cinema, master of documentary film and mentor to successive generations.
Marcel Łoziński (born 1940) was one of Poland’s most important documentarians, nominated for an Oscar for his film “89 mm from Europe” (1994). A graduate of the Faculty of Telecommunications at Warsaw University of Technology (1965) and the Directing Faculty at the Łódź Film School (1971), he began his career as a sound engineer at the Documentary Film Studio. In the 1970s and 80s, he was associated with Polish Television and Andrzej Wajda’s Unit X. In January 1980, he was dismissed from the Documentary Film Studio by the Minister of Culture after two of his films were banned by censorship, and during martial law, he gave up making his own documentaries.
He was a member of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and a lecturer at the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing. One of the most important voices in Polish documentary cinema, he evolved from critical analysis of the communist system to intimate reflections on the human condition, always with an unquestionable talent for discovering truth hidden beneath the surface of reality. In his films, he employed elements of creation, staging, and artistic provocation, seeking a “catalyst” that would allow him to extract the truth about people and situations. As he said: “I try to influence reality, and then treat the created situation as open.” This method, though controversial, allowed him to uncover the deepest mechanisms of the system’s functioning and the human condition.
He was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis. He is the winner of numerous international awards, including festivals in Oberhausen, San Francisco, and Leipzig, and has been repeatedly honored at the Krakow Film Festival. In 2016, he received the prestigious Dragon of Dragons award. He was awarded the Polityka Passport (1995), the Culture Foundation Award, the Andrzej Wajda Freedom Award (2004) and many other distinctions.