Wanda Jakubowska

Born in 1907, died in 1998.

Film director and screenwriter. She was born on October 10, 1907, in Warsaw. Jakubowska was an art historian and a graduate of Warsaw University. Before the war she made documentaries and reportages. In 1930 she was among the founders of START, the Society of Film Art Devotees, (dissolved in 1934) composed of supporters of socially useful and ambitious cinema with a great artistic value. In 1935 the Cooperative of Film Authors, SAF, was established to produce films for social institutions. Her debut feature was the adaptation of Eliza Orzeszkowa’s Nad Niemnem (1939), which unfortunately was never produced – the film negative was lost during the war. She was active in the resistance movement throughout the years of occupation and in 1949 she was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta. In 1942 she was a prisoner in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp and then in Ravensbrück. The most famous film in her career, Ostatni etap (1947), presented her camp experiences and was regarded a protest against the fascist genocide. She propagated an idea of film crews and after the war she co-created the structure of Polish cinematography based on it. She headed SAF (1948-1949) and then START (1955-1968). For many years she was a lecturer with a professor title at the Łódź Film School. In 1950 she was awarded International Peace Prize. She received the State Prize several times.