Jerzy Skolimowski

Jerzy Skolimowski (b. May 5, 1938 in Lodz, Poland) is a Polish film director, scriptwriter, dramatist and actor. A graduate of the prestigious Polish Film School in Lodz, Skolimowski has directed more than twenty films in and outside of Poland since his 1960 debut Oko wykol (The Menacing Eye). Jerzy Skolimowski is a distinguished accomplished director, writer and actor. He is now living in Los Angeles for some years where he paints in a figurative, expressionist mode and acts occasionally in films.

Writer and Actor

In his early twenties Skolimowski was already a credentialed writer with several published books of poems, short stories and a play. Soon he met Andrzej Wajda, the leading director of the then dominant 'Polish school' and twelve years Skolimowski's senior, who has showed him a script for a film about youth written by Jerzy Andrzejewski, the author of the novel Ashes and Diamonds. Skolimowski was not impressed and dismissed the script however in response to a challenge by Wajda, he produced his own version which became a basis for the finished film, The Innocent Sorcerers (1960), directed by Wajda with Skolimowski playing a boxer.

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Skolimowski enrolled in the Lódz Film School with the intention of avoiding the long apprenticeship required before graduating to feature film direction. He used the film stock available to him for student exercises and with initial advice from Andrzej Munk, he filmed over several years in such a way that the sequences cut together into a feature. While scoring poorly in course work Skolimowski had a finished feature by the end of the course.

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