The meeting took place on 27 April. It was organised in Kliczków because this was where the young Henryk Baranowski settled with his mother after being rescued from a concentration camp. “For him, it is the paradise of a lost childhood; he always talks about Kliczków with great affection,” says Józefa Witas, owner of the Agora bookshop in Bolesławiec and organiser of the meeting.
Henryk Baranowski is a Renaissance man. A film, theatre and opera director. An actor, poet and philosopher. At the same time, he is a person with a highly logical mind and wide-ranging talents. Film lovers may know him, among other things, from the first and third parts of “Dekalog” by Krzysztof Kieślowski, in which he played the father. He also played Napoleon Bonaparte in Andrzej Wajda’s “Pan Tadeusz”.
“The meeting was very interesting,” says Józefa Witas. “I did not expect so many people to come.” The theatre hall was literally bursting at the seams. “The topics discussed were genuinely profound: ecology, God, faith and humanity’s relationship with Mother Earth,” lists the owner of Agora.
Before the discussion began, however, there was a screening of “Święta wiedźmy”, a television adaptation of a novel by the tragically deceased writer Christian Skrzyposzek, who was also a personal friend of Henryk Baranowski. As it turned out, the screening was not accidental. Józefa Witas is planning to organise a week devoted to films by the outstanding director.
It is worth adding that Henryk Baranowski has very strong ties to Bolesławiec. The motif of the years he spent in our town as a young man often appears in his poems. Moreover, the director is a graduate of the local I Liceum Ogólnokształcące. On Friday, 25 April, at the initiative of I LO deputy head Katarzyna Żak, he met with students at his former school. He told them, among other things, about the Tyrankiewicz couple, outstanding teachers at the school, and about his professional career. He also recalled his school years.
“We have someone who comes from here, who strongly identifies with us and keeps emphasising it,” says Józefa Witas. “We must do everything to make him feel welcome here and return as often as possible,” she adds.
(GA information)