The Leon Schiller National Film, Television and Theatre School in Łódź has reached age 75. It is one of the oldest film schools in the world and over the years its graduates have gone on to win the most prestigious awards, including Oscars.

What do figures such as Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Roman Polański, Andrzej Munk, Jerzy Skolimowski, Janusz Morgenstern, Kazimierz Kutz or Krzysztof Zanussi have in common? They all participated in the history of Polish cinema, but they are also linked by the corridors of the showcase of Polish cinema, i.e. the popular Film School located in the Oskar Kon Palace at 61/63 Targowa Street in Łódź.

The official date of the establishment of the Łódź Film School is the 8th of March 1948. Its origins, however, can be found in the Youth Film Workshops established as early as 1945 by Antoni Bohdziewicz. During the war, Bohdziewicz was active in the Home Army (AK); during the Warsaw Uprising, he was head of the Film Department of the Information and Propaganda Bureau of the Home Army Headquarters.

In 1949, Jerzy Toeplitz, one of the school’s co-organisers, later its rector and a long-time lecturer, took over as its director. The first lecturers included Jerzy Bossak, Wanda Jakubowska, Stanisław Wohl and Antoni Bohdziewicz. The first students were Andrzej Wajda, Andrzej Munk, Janusz Morgenstern, Kazimierz Kutz and Kazimierz Karabasz, Jerzy Wójcik and Witold Sobociński. In 1954, Roman Polański and in the following years Witold Leszczyński, Jerzy Skolimowski, Krzysztof Zanussi, and Krzysztof Kieślowski joined this group.

For its 75 years of existence, the Lodz school has educated many leading directors, cinematographers and actors who have won all the major film awards. In 2014, it was ranked second in the world in The Hollywood Reporter magazine’s ranking of film schools. The ‘film school’ is still based in the pre-war residence of the owner of Widzew Manufaktura, the Lodz industrialist Oskar Kon. 

Arkadiusz Słomczyński