I Think There Is Still a Place for Human Beings, for Artists. An Interview with Ewa Braun
I Think There Is Still a Place for Human Beings, for Artists. An Interview with Ewa Braun
“In a way, we were trying to prove that Poles are professionals and that we are capable of working together on major projects. This Oscar means a great deal to me because it is an individual award. It is the highest professional honour,” says Ewa Braun.
Paweł Jankowski: How are you enjoying your time in Lipno at the “Pola and Others” Film Festival?
Ewa Braun: Very much! I am genuinely impressed by the festival’s format and by the extraordinary dedication and passion of its organisers, the Pola Negri Cultural Society. I was both surprised and deeply touched by the invitation to accept the Politka – the Pola Negri Award. For a moment, I wondered what connection I had with Negri, apart from my admiration for her. Later, I jokingly remarked that perhaps we had both once set our sights on California, Los Angeles and Hollywood. She stayed there longer, while my stay was shorter, but I came home with an Oscar. So, in a way, there is a connection between us after all.
Previously, I knew Lipno simply as a town I passed through on my way to the Camerimage festival in Toruń. Now I know that it has several wonderful historic landmarks. I am enchanted by the reconstruction of the Nawojka Cinema building. It is also lovely to see the interest shown by local residents in this event, which is now in its nineteenth edition. Yesterday was a celebration in my honour, so I felt particularly welcome.
A festival like this might get lost among the multitude of cultural events taking place in a large city. In Lipno, the local community has an opportunity to meet outstanding artists and actors whom they admire. I think this is precisely the kind of event that deserves support so that it can continue into the future.
When we watch a film, we tend to focus first on the actors and then perhaps think about the director. Yet film is also about the visual image, production design and costumes. Do you ever feel that production designers are somewhat overlooked by the average viewer?
Let me share an anecdote from Hollywood. When I attended the Academy Awards ceremony as a nominee, Tom Hanks was presenting the Oscar for Best Art Direction–Set Decoration.
At the time, Arthur Hiller was president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. As tradition dictates, the Academy president always appears at the beginning of the ceremony to say a few words about what the Academy considers particularly important that year. He announced that the 66th Academy Awards would be dedicated to the people who work behind the camera.
This illustrates precisely what you mentioned: production design, our profession, operates somewhat behind the scenes. In fact, it came as a great surprise that the award for Best Art Direction–Set Decoration was presented first that evening.
After a few jokes from Whoopi Goldberg, who was hosting the ceremony, Tom Hanks appeared with that magical envelope. Before opening it, he said that once upon a time, all you needed to make a film was the sun, a camera and an actor. But it turned out that this was not enough, and production design became necessary. He then announced the nominated films and their creators.
As I attended the ceremony, feeling extremely emotional, I could not shake the impression that our black-and-white film probably stood less of a chance against such a spectacular display of visual beauty. Let me remind you that the competition that year was truly extraordinary in terms of production design. Alongside our Schindler’s List, the nominees included The Age of Innocence, The Remains of the Day and Addams Family Values.
The competition was fierce, but it turns out that spectacular production design alone does not necessarily make a film an award-winning success. All the elements that make up a film – its visual imagery, direction and the importance of its subject matter – should form a unified whole. This is particularly true when they are brought together seamlessly.
Returning to the idea that film is a visual medium, even the most beautiful images must evoke emotions. Viewers want to feel moved by the characters and surprised by the cinematic world. A film must provoke an emotional response.
What should the relationship between a production designer and a director look like?
People often say that working in a film crew involves a kind of natural selection. In other words, filmmakers need to find common ground in their sensibilities, aesthetic preferences and shared vision of the world they are recreating on screen.
Sometimes this understanding comes from years of working together. We all know examples of directors who repeatedly collaborate with the same production designers. There are also directors who, having heard about or seen the results of someone’s artistic work on other projects, feel that they might find a common visual language with that person.
Above all, reaching an understanding with the cinematographer is extremely important. There is a saying in our profession that no matter how magnificent the production design may be, if the camera does not capture it properly, much of its value is lost.
Production design must also be coherent. It cannot serve merely as decoration. The world being recreated has to be convincing, and the role of production design is to strengthen that sense of authenticity.
I have worked on thirty-two interior set designs, and I always insist that the role of the set decorator should receive proper recognition. Very often, the spaces or interiors created by a production designer need to be filled with dozens of different details that define and bring the characters’ world to life. That is precisely the set decorator’s responsibility.
How does working on a Polish film differ from working on a Hollywood production?
Most of my professional experience has been gained, so to speak, under two different systems. I began working during the era of state-controlled cinematography. Naturally, there was a production manager and an allocated film budget. Occasionally, under extraordinary circumstances or when particular needs arose, it was possible to obtain additional funds from the state film industry.
After the political and economic transformation, the era of private producers began. I worked with Lew Rywin’s Heritage Films on several productions. Money began to flow into filmmaking, sometimes in substantial amounts, and that opened up much greater possibilities.
The Polish film industry began adopting practices from the Western system. One important principle is that a producer is not merely an accountant whose only responsibility is to release money from the bank. A producer is also a creative figure.
In the American system, the creative producer, whose name appears in the opening credits, is someone who often has a dream project in mind from the very beginning. They acquire the rights to a literary work, and then the project frequently goes through a lengthy development process.
With Schindler’s List, we found ourselves in an ideal situation because Steven Spielberg was both the director and the producer. This meant that his artistic vision could be fully realised. When entirely new scenes were conceived during filming, the director could step into the producer’s role and provide additional funding.
Unfortunately, in today’s Polish film industry, there are cases where producers begin shooting without securing sufficient financial liquidity, and funding sources that were supposed to support the project fail to deliver.
A film may already be in production, with guaranteed financing from the Polish Film Institute or television, but then everything grinds to a halt because a sponsor withdraws or delays payments.
What saddens me most is seeing young directors devote all their energy, time and resourcefulness to knocking on doors in search of funding. Instead of concentrating on the creative process, they are forced to spend their time securing money for their films.
The communist era in Poland was a time of shortages in virtually every area of life. We often hear stories about people working on film sets bringing their own belongings from home because they suited the visual setting. Did you ever experience situations like that?
Absolutely. I often felt that the story, the circumstances and the expectations of directors and actors meant that my work was no longer really about designing, developing concepts or creating the visual identities of characters. Instead, it was simply about finding “Western clothes”.
On one occasion, I dressed a leading actor in a sweater I had just bought for my fiancé from Moda Polska. When it came to women’s costumes, I sometimes offered my own handbag, scarf or beret.
Eventually, I grew tired of this. I began to feel that I was becoming more of an efficient procurement officer than an artist.
My interests had always been quite specific. I was fascinated by the beauty of objects and regularly visited antique shops, museums and Desa art and antique galleries.
I was drawn to recreating the atmosphere of different historical periods. That is why I often preferred furnishing a restaurant run by a rural cooperative, a small shop or a drawing room in a Polish manor house.
I felt that by selecting particular objects, I could contribute to creating the visual world presented to the audience, in a way that reflected my own taste and aesthetic sensibilities.
As a qualified art historian, I understand which objects and props can carry dramatic significance, whether through their unusual appearance or their symbolism.
I once read about the filming of the television series Samochodzik i Templariusze (Mr Samochodzik and the Templars). There was a scene in which the characters opened imported cans of juice. The actors were told that there could only be one take because there were just two cans available. If something went wrong, there would be no second chance.
I have had similar experiences myself. One of them was connected with the Polish-Canadian film Cudowne dziecko (The Young Magician), directed by Waldemar Dziki. My work on the film was recognised with a Bronze Lions award at the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia in 1987.
It was one of my first experiences of working on a film shot in Poland whose storyline required an American setting.
This was the extremely difficult period of the late 1980s, when greyness, poverty and a general sense of neglect characterised everyday life. Yet we were supposed to depict an upper-middle-class Canadian family.
The story centred on a prosperous household with a child who lived in a world of his own, but one that was nevertheless distinctly North American.
Even the most basic things became a problem. For example, we recreated a shopping mall in the Domy Centrum department stores in Łódź, which at that time had the drab, neglected appearance typical of communist-era Poland.
Preparing the location for filming involved washing windows and cleaning all the passageways and staircases.
It turned out that we had to import some very ordinary things from Canada, such as Lego bricks and toys typical of American children, which we knew only from films.
I will never forget discovering a child’s bedroom at the home of some friends. There was an E.T. poster on the wall, and I begged them to lend it to me for the set. I had to promise that I would return it in perfect condition.
We had to organise countless things of this kind, even importing Coca-Cola.
It is often extremely difficult to make a setting believable when the actual surroundings have little in common with the original location, its standards or even its level of material development.
Nevertheless, you have to create something that audiences sitting in a cinema will believe – for example, that they are looking at an American school rather than a Polish primary school.
Production design is a form of reinterpretation. What matters is identifying and highlighting the elements that define a particular world.
It makes no difference whether that world is the harsh reality of wartime occupation or a patrician banquet in the fourth century, which I once had the opportunity to stage for Ryszard Ber’s film Thais.
What is important in an artistic profession is the opportunity for development. I have always tried to move forward and avoid falling into a routine.
At one point, I became a little concerned that I was turning into a specialist in aristocratic and bourgeois drawing rooms.
It just so happened that the films I worked on included Zazdrość i medycyna (Jealousy and Medicine), the television series Zaklęty dwór and Kariera Nikodema Dyzmy (The Career of Nikodem Dyzma).
Those productions featured a certain degree of exaggeration and a somewhat grotesque portrayal of the worlds of the nouveau riche and the aristocracy.
I noticed that your filmography does not seem to include any fantasy or science-fiction films.
I have never really worked in that genre. I feel much more at home with historical films and period productions.
Naturally, this is connected with my education. I find it easier to work with historical documentation and visual sources relating to a specific period, such as the reign of the last Jagiellonian rulers.
I worked on Królowa Bona (Queen Bona) and Epitafium dla Barbary Radziwiłłówny (An Epitaph for Barbara Radziwiłł).
Productions such as Zaklęty dwór gave me the satisfaction of recreating worlds that have virtually disappeared, but which can be brought back to life through a faithful and imaginative reconstruction.
Films that refer to historical events, cultural and civilisational developments, and traditions provide a source of shared experience. Every generation can see something of itself reflected in these images of Polish history.
Personally, I am not particularly fond of action films set in entirely artificial worlds. I am much more interested in psychological cinema.
Artificial intelligence is currently one of the most widely discussed subjects in the world. Do you think it poses a threat to the role of production designers?
I believe it is simply another tool that expands our creative possibilities, allowing us to achieve things that were sometimes difficult in the past.
There was a time when we used painted extensions, perspective tricks or scenic backdrops placed outside windows. Then came the era of green screens and blue screens, when actors performed in virtually empty studio spaces, expressing their emotions against blank backgrounds.
Today, we can create entirely new worlds. But I think there is still a place for human beings, for artists. Artificial intelligence cannot dream up what the mind of an artist can imagine.
I cannot resist asking about the fulfilment of the “American Dream”. How did you and Allan Starski come to work with Steven Spielberg on Schindler’s List?
I once expressed the opinion that every success involves a certain amount of luck, and that we should do our best to help that luck along. But sometimes circumstances simply come together in a particularly fortunate way.
One of the film’s co-producers was Lew Rywin’s Polish company, which was heavily involved in the project. I had worked with Allan Starski several times before.
The Polish co-producer recommended us, believing that we were capable of meeting the challenge.
I think Steven Spielberg made the right decision not to bring American production designers with him. They would have needed time to familiarise themselves with the realities of German-occupied Poland, which would probably have required extensive research and documentation, even on relatively simple matters.
For us, as Polish production designers, the occupation was something we had grown up hearing about from our grandparents and parents. We knew it from books and from the traces and consequences of the Holocaust.
Our previous films also served as recommendations, including Agnieszka Holland’s Europa Europa and Andrzej Wajda’s black-and-white Korczak.
Spielberg placed his trust in us, and one question kept recurring in his comments: “Is this historically accurate?”
A small number of witnesses to those events visited the film set, particularly people who had been saved by Schindler.
During lunch breaks, Steven Spielberg would talk to them and ask about specific details. Very often, any additional information he learned would immediately find its way into a scene.
For example, when Mrs Niusia Horowitz-Karakulska told him that a typical meal at the time consisted of dark bread and canned marmalade, cut with a knife into hard pieces, he immediately asked for these items to be prominently featured as props in particular scenes.
I attach great importance to details. Schindler’s List contains dozens of authentic, original props which, taken together, create an additional layer of storytelling and reinforce the film’s dramatic impact.
The images themselves, masterfully brought together through editing and combined with John Williams’s music, create the film’s atmosphere and emotional depth.
All these elements contributed to its remarkable success.
The film received twelve Academy Award nominations and won seven Oscars, including the major awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction–Set Decoration, Best Film Editing and Best Original Score.
Do you consider Schindler’s List your most important artistic achievement?
The circumstances were exceptional. It was difficult, demanding work that lasted many months. There were also the emotions associated with working with the director and the American crew.
In a way, we were trying to prove that Poles are professionals and that we are capable of working together on major international projects.
This Oscar means a great deal to me because it is an individual award. It is the highest professional honour.
So yes, I certainly consider Schindler’s List my most important achievement.
Nevertheless, my earlier films also presented considerable challenges. Historical productions such as Queen Bona and An Epitaph for Barbara Radziwiłł involved numerous production difficulties and problems with obtaining the necessary materials.
I also remember an American project that ultimately never came to fruition. Working with Janusz Sosnowski, we had undertaken the task of recreating an American setting.
At the time, I travelled to West Berlin to buy paints, pigments, spray paints and various types of film materials because they were extremely difficult to obtain in Poland. In West Berlin, meanwhile, they were available in every art supply shop, in all sorts of colours, shades and sizes.
The challenge was to find substitutes for things that were unavailable.
Experiences like these have made even the most difficult productions seem less intimidating to me.
Talent is not the only thing that matters. Organisational skills are equally important.
Sometimes compromises have to be made at the expense of the original artistic vision.
An ambitious production designer does not give in to difficulties but looks for alternative means of artistic expression.
Paweł Jankowski
Promotion Department
21 October 2026