Afterimage

Legendary director Andrzej Wajda's final film is a passionate portrait of renowned avantgarde painter Wladyslaw Strzeminski, who challenged Stalinist orthodoxy. In post-war Poland, Strzeminski works as a professor at the National School of Fine Arts in Lodz. His students treat him like the "messiah of modern painting," but university authorities and the Ministry of Culture have a differing opinion. Refusing to comply with Party regulations, he is eventually expelled from the university and the artists' union. As the Communist authorities continue their efforts to ruin him, Strzeminski remains steadfast in his political and artistic convictions.

"The final film by the great Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda (1926-2016) tells the story of another major Polish artist. Wladyslaw Strzeminski, who lost both an arm and a leg in World War I, was a leading abstract artist in the 1930s and ‘40s, but when the Soviet Union installed a Communist government in Poland after the war he was hounded, denounced, and attacked for refusing to betray his principles... It’s a fitting final word from a filmmaker who also challenged Soviet culture commissars and censors throughout his own career. Recommended." - Video Librarian