Rafael Lewandowski

My name is Rafael Lewandowski, I’m a Polish-French film director, or French-Polish.

What is your current place of residence?

I live in Warsaw, Poland.

What were the reasons for your father to leave Poland?

It was like this, my mom arrived to Poland with a group of French students. She was twenty years old. It was in ‘65. Skiing, I don’t know why, I still find it... strange, that you would come from France to Poland to ski, when you have great conditions there. And so, she arrived at Karpacz. And there was no snow. And in the guest house next door, they had a group of students from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw which included my dad, and they met on an integration party or some such.

How did a French education and movie-making traditions influenced your professional success?

Being under a tremendous influence of French culture, French cinema which is, you could say, more like literature, where dialogues, words, screenplay are more important than in Polish cinema. I always had a different sensitivity, I felt it, a certain lyricism that came from this culture, and I remember that when I was at film school, for example, I would shoot documentaries and for me... including the film for my degree thesis which I shot in Poland and I really wanted it to have music. And in the beginning my artistic supervisor, a Frenchman, couldn’t understand it. He says “it’s reality, this is a documentary, why do you want to add a lyrical layer that simply plays on emotions” and so on. And I said “because a documentary isn’t objective, to me, it’s subjective, and without the music, I have a feeling that I fail to express certain feelings and sensitivity that I have in regards to this story”. And I know that this came from Poland, from this sensitivity.

How do you assess the phenomenon of emigration? Does it have a positive or negative impact on a person?

Migration is a crucial element of history, culture, identity of this country we live in, and I very often hear that you can be a Pole, understand Poland only when you’re here, a real Pole, which for me, is a total misunderstanding, because when we look at, for example, what happened in France, how Poles could live and thrive in Poland since the 19th century, then we know that Poland, in a sense, partially existed in France. And it should be remembered and loudly proclaimed that Poland, because Poles can be found everywhere in the World, for various political, economic reasons for many years, Poland, in a sense, exists today thanks to the fact the she exists all over the World. We should be proud of it and be acutely aware that Poland exists not only here. And the Poles exist not only here. And that you can be a Pole when you’re in France, the States and so on, but not only, being only half Polish, like me and it’s amazing... an amazing chance for Poland, for many years it was a chance for Poland and it’s still a tremendous wealth, unfortunately, most Poles don’t remember that.

What would you say to young people who want to leave?

Leaving your country is a tough decision that needs to be well thought out and, I think, shouldn’t in any case be an escape.

What did you dream about when you returned to Poland?

I dreamt not to be alone.

What Polish tastes, smells did you miss?

When I was a kid I loved blackcurrant juice which was unheard of in France.

Your debut, “The Mole” is firmly rooted in Polish history and touches a very important issue for Poles, the Solidarność. Why did you select this topic?

The topic of the Solidarność, the consequences of change and so forth, is not only present in my work, but also for a long time has been in the documentaries I shot before “The Mole”. Simply because, I was very emotional about it and wanted to confront with what in a sense... was in my head, a myth, very important. Because, like I said, in ‘81, I was eleven years old, in ‘89, I was eighteen, so throughout puberty I was under the influence of what was going on here, the fight for freedom and so on.

Were Polish traditions, customs cultivated in your family house?

From what I remember, this culture was mainly conveyed through books, it was also language of course, my dad also spoke Polish to me, and when I was seven or eight, well, I wanted like every child, normally, to what he told me in Polish, I responded in French.

How was your relationship with your family in Poland?

The contact was frequent, but it ended in ‘81, because my dad was very politically engaged back then and for five years we didn’t... I don’t know if we didn’t have the right, anyway, dad would surely be denied a visa to come to Poland, and I think, we didn’t want our family here to have... to put them into trouble because of dad’s political involvement, so in connection with that there was censorship for a time, packages, letters were controlled as we all know. We couldn’t make phone calls, and so, for a time, the contact loosened.

What made you decide to work in Poland and create movies for Polish audiences?

No, I don’t work for Polish audiences, I work for the viewers... French or Polish, or... generally I can say that I work for the European viewer, because all my stories are somehow connected, either in a documentary or a storyline, with what happened on the continent basically between France and Poland, but also other countries. But, when I shot “The Mole” I discovered that the American viewers also have a prefect grasp of our stories and that’s... you need to find the proper expression, proper form, so that the stories are universal. If... of course we go back to “The Mole” which is very deeply entrenched in Polish realities and so on, throughout the process of writing the script about (ns) [translator’s note: sic] we had... we thought about that, how to do it so that the context would be understandable for others, maybe not so much how a Polish viewer would understand it, but so it wouldn’t be like “what is this, what happened in the eighties, and so on”. So delicately providing this information which... is enough to understand that in the nineties, there was no democracy. Now, the Polish viewer knows what it means that there was no democracy much better than a French viewer, but for them it’s like “Ok, no democracy, we more or less know, maybe not remember fully, who Jaruzelski was and so on, but we know what it’s like not to have democracy, and suddenly - freedom”.

What should the people emigrating from the country remember?

Whoever decides to emigrate should always remember who they are, their culture, spirituality, and language first and foremost. Never forget and never pretend to be somebody else.