Agnieszka Holland

As the movie industry is undeniably dominated by men, it is important for women directors to make their presence known through the films they create. As auteurs, female directors have the choice to make their voices heard, whether they choose to concentrate on spreading the feminist message or in the form of other social or political contexts. A woman who is successful as a filmmaker is a great stride on its own.

According to Maggie Humm's Author/Auteur chapter in her book, Feminism and Film, "Feminist literary critics have already made a firm decision that gender shapes signature and that there is an aesthetic difference in the way in which gendered signatures write" (Humm 110). For this reason, female filmmakers are essential to bring forth issues and stories as viewed through the female mind onto the general public. Humm goes further to support her theory by citing Alexandre Astruc's idea of "the camera which Astruc identifies as a writer's pen, or metaphorical penis, and as the mechanism with which directors inscribe their ideas onto film" (Humm 96).

Agnieszka Holland is a prominent Polish director as well as screenwriter. Born in 1948 in Warsaw, Poland, Holland graduated from the Prague Film and TV Academy (FAMU) in 1971 as Poland’s best cinema institute was inaccessible to her in 1966 due to her mixed Polish Catholic and Jewish ancestry. Holland started her career as a filmmaker by working with Polish directors, Krzysztof Zanussi and Andrzej Wajda, as an assistant director. Soon after, Holland began making her own films. Even though, Holland realizes the importance of women in her film, feminism is not the central theme in her work. Rather her early work mainly consists of political agendas. For example, while making movies in Poland under the communist regime, Holland concentrated on what appeared to be the main political issue – cross-gender solidarity against censorship. As an auteur, Holland is most known for her highly politicized contributions to Polish New Wave cinema.


It is thanks to this "metaphorical penis" that Holland has managed to receive international acclaim for her films. After escaping the Polish martial law in 1981, Holland moved to Paris, France. Her 1985 film "Bittere Ernete/Angry Harvest", which is an examination of the relationship between a gentile farmer and the Jewish woman he conceals during World War II, has earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. Even though the film may be construed as counter-productive in the feminist world, that is not the story's focus. The film concentrates on political and social context by shedding light on the human atrocities that occurred in the Holocaust. Holland garnered even greater international acclaim through her 1991 film "Europa, Europa." The film tells the true story of a Jewish man who assumes the identity of a Nazi in order to survive the Holocaust. Again, this film concentrates on political and social context. This powerful film highlights the human atrocities that occured during World War II but also adds a dimension by discussing the nature of identity.

Presently, Ms. Holland continues to create films and directing various other projects. In a 2000 interview with a Polish newspaper, "Rzeczpospolita," Holland spoke of the attempts to reach a wider audience. She confesses that she wants to make "cinema of the middle," understandable to the average spectator, yet "with a certain scale of complexity and an intellectual message."

Photo Credit: Jeff Vespa / WireImage.com
Humm, Maggie. "Feminism and Film." Indiana University Press: 1997.
NYTimes.com Person Profile: Agnieszka Holland - http://movies.nytimes.com/person/94664/Agnieszka-Holland
Agnieszka Holland feature - http://www.culture.pl/en/culture/artykuly/os_holland_agnieszka