Aleksander Ford (born Mosze Lifszyc; 24 November 1908 in

Kiev Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the List of European cities by populat ...

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

– 4 April 1980 in

Naples, Florida Naples is a city in Collier County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the historical city (i.e. in the immediate vicinity of downtown Naples) was 19,115. Naples is a principal city of the Naples-Marco Island, Flori ...

U.S. The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

) was a Polish

film director A film director controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfilment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the cast members, p ...

; and head of the Polish People's Army Film Crew in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

during World War II. Following the war, he was appointed director of the

Film Polski Film Polski (also Przedsiębiorstwo Państwowe Film Polski) was the state-run film production and distribution organization of Poland, founded in 1945. History On November 13, 1945, the postwar communist government decreed the formation of Polsk ...

company. In 1948 he was appointed as a professor of the

National Film School in Łódź National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

(Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Filmowa).

Roman Polanski Raymond Roman Thierry Polański , group=lower-alpha, name=note_a (né Liebling; 18 August 1933) is a French-Polish film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, two ...

was among his students. Another of Ford's

protégé Mentorship is the influence, guidance, or direction given by a mentor. A mentor is someone who teaches or gives help and advice to a less experienced and often younger person. In an organizational setting, a mentor influences the personal and p ...

s was the Polish film director

Andrzej Wajda Andrzej Witold Wajda (; 6 March 1926 – 9 October 2016) was a Polish film and theatre director. Recipient of an Honorary Oscar, the Palme d'Or, as well as Honorary Golden Lion and Honorary Golden Bear Awards, he was a prominent member of the ...

. Following the

anti-Semitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...

purge in the communist party in Poland, in 1968 Ford emigrated to Israel and from there through Germany and Denmark, to the United States. He committed suicide in 1980 in Naples, Florida.Dr. Edyta Gawron, Department of Jewish Studies,

Jagiellonian University The Jagiellonian University (Polish: ''Uniwersytet Jagielloński'', UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and the 13th oldest university in ...

, Kraków
"Contemporary history of Jews in Poland (1945-2005) – as Depicted in the Film."
PDF file (direct download): 194.7 KB. Retrieved June 24, 2012.

Professional career

Ford made his first

feature film A feature film or feature-length film is a narrative film (motion picture or "movie") with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole presentation in a commercial entertainment program. The term ''feature film'' originall ...

, ''Mascot'' in 1930, after a year of making short

silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when ...

s. He did not use sound until ''The Legion of the Streets'' (1932). When World War II began, Ford escaped to the Soviet Union and worked closely with

Jerzy Bossak Jerzy is the Polish version of the masculine given name George. The most common nickname for Jerzy is Jurek (), which may also be used as an official first name. Occasionally the nickname Jerzyk may be used, which means "swift" in Polish. People ...

to establish a film unit for the Soviet-sponsored People's Army of Poland in the USSR. The unit was called ''Czołówka Filmowa Ludowego Wojska Polskiego'' (or simply ''Czołówka''; spearhead). After the war, Ford was appointed head of the government-controlled

and held enormous sway over the country's entire film industry. In the process of accumulating power, he denounced a fellow film director Jerzy Gabryelski to the Soviet

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...

secret police, contentiously accusing him of "reactionary" and "antisemitic" views, which resulted in Gabryelski's arrest and torture.Marek Chodakiewicz: After the Holocaust. Polish - Jewish relations 1944-1947. Ford and a group of colleagues from the Polish Communist Party rebuilt most of the country's film production infrastructure.

wrote in his biography about them: ''"They included some extremely competent people, notably Aleksander Ford, a veteran party member, who was then an orthodox

Stalinist Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist-Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory o ...

. ��The real power broker during the immediate postwar period was Ford himself, who established a small film empire of his own."'' For the next twenty years, Ford served as a professor at the state-run National Film School in

Łódź Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of canti ...

(Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Filmowa). He is perhaps best remembered for directing the first postwar documentary ''Majdanek - cmentarzysko Europy'' (Majdanek – the Cemetery of Europe) and the feature film ''

Knights of the Teutonic Order The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem, commonly known as the Teutonic Order, is a Catholic religious institution founded as a military society in Acre, Kingdom of Jerusalem. It was formed to aid Christians on ...

'' (1960), based on a novel of the same name by Polish author

Henryk Sienkiewicz Henryk Adam Aleksander Pius Sienkiewicz ( , ; 5 May 1846 – 15 November 1916), also known by the pseudonym Litwos (), was a Polish writer, novelist, journalist and Nobel Prize laureate. He is best remembered for his historical novels, especi ...

. Ford, a self-identified

Communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

, used his films to "express social messages on the screen," as in his documentaries: the award-winning ''Legion ulicy'', (The Street Legion, 1932), ''Children Must Laugh'' (1936) and the postwar ''Eighth Day of the Week'' (1958) rejected by the communist party censors during the

Polish October Polish October (), also known as October 1956, Polish thaw, or Gomułka's thaw, marked a change in the politics of Poland in the second half of 1956. Some social scientists term it the Polish October Revolution, which was less dramatic than the ...

. Ford continued making films in Poland until the

1968 Polish political crisis The Polish 1968 political crisis, also known in Poland as March 1968, Students' March, or March events ( pl, Marzec 1968; studencki Marzec; wydarzenia marcowe), was a series of major student, intellectual and other protests against the ruling Poli ...

. Accused of antisocialist activity and expelled from the Communist Party, Ford emigrated to Israel where he lived for the next two years. He later moved to Denmark and eventually settled in the United States. Ford made two more feature films, both of which were commercial and critical failures. In 1973, he made a film adaptation of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel ''

The First Circle ''In the First Circle'' (russian: link=no, italics=yes, В круге первом, V kruge pervom; also published as ''The First Circle'') is a novel by Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, released in 1968. A more complete version of the boo ...

'', a Danish-Swedish production that recounted the horrors of the Soviet gulag. In 1975 he made ', an English language, Israeli-German co-production based on the heroic story of Dr. Janusz Korczak. Blacklisted by the Polish

communist government A communist state, also known as a Marxist–Leninist state, is a one-party state that is administered and governed by a communist party guided by Marxism–Leninism. Marxism–Leninism was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, the Cominte ...

as a political defector, Ford became a non-person in contemporary discussions and analysis of Polish filmmaking. He committed suicide in a Florida hotel on 4 April 1980.Anna Misiak
"Politically Involved Filmmaker: Aleksander Ford and Film Censorship in Poland after 1945", ''Kinema'', 2003
/ref>

Selected filmography

* ''You are free, Doctor Korczak'' (1975) * ''

'' (1973) * ''

The Doctor Speaks Out ''The Doctor Speaks Out'' or ''The Doctor Says'' (german: Der Arzt stellt fest...) is a 1966 West German-Swiss drama film directed by Aleksander Ford and starring Tadeusz Łomnicki, René Deltgen and Margot Trooger.Monaco p.199 The film's sets w ...

'' (1966) * ''

The First Day of Freedom ''The First Day of Freedom'' ( pl, Pierwszy dzień wolności) is a 1964 Polish drama film directed by Aleksander Ford. It was entered into the 1965 Cannes Film Festival. Cast * Tadeusz Łomnicki - Lt. Jan * Beata Tyszkiewicz - Inga Rhode * Tade ...

'' (''Pierwszy dzień wolności'', 1964) * ''

'' (''Krzyżacy'', 1960) * ''

The Eighth Day of the Week ''The Eighth Day of the Week'' ( pl, Ósmy dzień tygodnia) is a 1958 Polish-German drama film directed by Aleksander Ford. Cast * Sonja Ziemann - Agnieszka Walicka * Zbigniew Cybulski - Piotr Terlecki * Jan Świderski - Journalist * Barbara Po ...

'' (''Ósmy dzień tygodnia'', 1959) * ''

Five Boys from Barska Street ''Five Boys from Barska Street'' ( pl, Piątka z ulicy Barskiej) is a 1954 Polish drama film directed by Aleksander Ford, based on the 1952 novel of the same name by Kazimierz Koźniewski. It was awarded the International Prize at the 1954 Canne ...

'' (''Piątka z ulicy Barskiej'', 1954) * '' Youth of Chopin'' (''Młodość Chopina'', 1952) * '' Border Street'' (''Ulica Graniczna'', 1949) * ''Majdanek: Cemetery of Europe'' (''Majdanek - cmentarzysko Europy'', 1945) * ''Children Must Laugh'' (''Droga młodych'', original yiddish title: '' Mir kumen on'', 1936) * '' Granny Had No Worries'' (''Nie miała baba kłopotu'', 1935, co-directed with

Michał Waszyński Michał Waszyński (29 September 1904 – 20 February 1965) was first a film director in Poland, then in Italy, and later (as Michael Waszynski) a film producer, producer of major United States, American films, mainly in Spain. Known for hi ...

) * ''Legion of the Streets'' (''Legion Ulicy'', 1932)

References

External links

*
Knights of the Teutonic Order - Aleksander Ford
at Culture.pl {{DEFAULTSORT:Ford, Aleksander 1908 births 1980 deaths Artists who committed suicide Polish film directors Jews from the Russian Empire Recipients of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1944–1989) Recipients of the Order of the Banner of Work Jewish film people Film people from Kyiv 1980 suicides Suicides by hanging in Florida Polish emigrants to the United States

Professional career

Selected filmography

See also

References

External links