Wojciech Has

Biography

Wojciech Jerzy Has (April 1, 1925 – October 3, 2000) was a Polish film director, screenwriter and film producer. Wojciech Jerzy Has was born in Kraków, with Jewish origin on his father's side, and Roman Catholic on his mother's. During the wartime German occupation of Poland, Has studied at the Kraków Business and Commerce College and later clandestine underground classes at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts - until it was disbanded in 1943. When the war ended, he went on to study at the reconstituted Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. In 1946, Has completed a one-year course in film and began producing educational and documentary films at the Warsaw Documentary Film Studio, and in the 1950s moved on to work at Poland's premier filmmaking academy, the National Film Studio, in Łódź. Has made his debut with Harmony (Harmonia, 1948), a medium-length feature, and began making full-length feature films in 1957. In 1974, he was appointed as professor in the directing department at the National Film School in Łódź. Throughout his long and prolific career, he directed such notable films as The Saragossa Manuscript, The Doll and The Hour-Glass Sanatorium (also known as The Sandglass). Early o…

Directed

1. The Saragossa Manuscript (1966) — Director
2. The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973) — Director
3. The Noose (1958) — Director
4. How to Be Loved (1963) — Director
5. The Doll (1968) — Director
6. The Tribulations of Balthazar Kober (1988) — Director
7. Memoirs of a Sinner (1986) — Director
8. One Room Tenants (1960) — Director
9. Farewells (1958) — Director
10. An Uneventful Story (1983) — Director
11. The Codes (1966) — Director
12. Accordion (1947) — Director
13. Goodbye to the Past (1961) — Director
14. Write and Fight (1985) — Director
15. Gold Dreams (1962) — Director
16. My City (1950) — Director
17. Brzozowa Street (1947) — Director
18. Steam Locomotive Pt 47 (1949) — Director
19. Janek’s Feeder (1952) — Director
20. Scouts at a Rally (1952) — Director
21. Centralized Control of Production Flow – Sugar (1951) — Director
22. The First Crop (1950) — Director
23. Herbalists of the Stony Valley (1952) — Director
24. Our Team (1955) — Director
25. Cultural Review 2/53 (1953) — Director

Also appeared in

1. Gold Dreams (1962) — Militiaman (uncredited)
2. Ślady (2012) — Self
3. Polish School (1997) — Self
4. Description Found Years Later (2023) — Self (archive footage) (uncredited)
5. Saragossa (1998)