Colonel Wolodyjowski

Born: 1932, Krakow. Director and screenwriter. Studied film directing at the State Film Institute in Moscow, received the diploma in 1955. Between 1954 and 1965 he worked in a team with Edward Skorzewski. They co-directed 27 documentaries and 3 features: The Gangsters and the Philanthropists,1962 (Gangsterzy i filantropi), The Law and the Fist, 1964 (Prawo i piesc) and Three Steps on the Earth, 1965 (Trzy kroki po ziemi). 1966 was the year of Jerzy Hoffman’s first independent project. After the successful adaptation of the last part of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Trilogy, Pan Wolodyjowski (1968), he made its prequel, The Deluge, which was nominated for the 1974 Academy Award for Best Foreign Picture. In the late 1990s Jerzy Hoffman made his greatest dream come true: he filmed With Fire and Sword (1999), thus making the Sienkiewicz Trilogy complete. The movie proved to be the biggest box office success in the last 20 years of the Polish film history. —rochester.edu