Witold Giersz
Biography
Witold Giersz was born on February 26th, 1927 in Poraj near Czestochowa. Initially he studied economy. Since 1950, he worked in cinematography. He studied direction at the Higher State School of Film, Television and Theatre in Łódź (1977). Witold Giersz cooperated with the Television Studio of Animated Films in Poznan, which he led in the years 1985-1992.
Illustration Features
Witold Giersz is a Polish scriptwriter, director and film cartoonist. In his early works he used traditional hand-drawn animation. Being fascinated by colourfulness as a creative expression he moved on to so called “drawings in motion”. We drew on celluloid, which produced excellent effects (enlivening empty colour area). At Studio of Film Miniatures in Bielsko-Biała Giersz directed his first film The Secret of an Old Castle/Tajomstvo starého zámku (1956). Since then, he has created altogether fifty-two films. A breakthrough point in his career was Little Western/ Malý western (1960), in which he used the technique of free brush painting without contouring characters which used to be compulsory until then. Thanks to this film Giersz won international esteem and was awarded numerous prizes (e.g. in Leipzig, Turin, Cork, Krakow, Oberhausen). Drawings in front of Giersz’s camera attained a deeper dimension (both literally and figuratively) in film Horse/Kôň (1967), where he started animating pictures using spatulas and a thick layer of colour on glass, rather than brush painting on celluloid. This made his films seem even more paintinglike, resembling oil paintings. Witold Giersz is still an active artist. Last year, he finished his latest film Signum inspired by ancient paintings on stone.