Aleksander Ford
Aleksander Ford
Aleksander Ford (born Mosze Lifszyc) was a Polish film director; and head of the Polish People's Army Film Crew in the Soviet Union during World War II. Ford became director of the nationalized Film Polski company following the Red Army occupation of Poland. In 1948 the new communist authorities appointed him professor of the National Film School in Łódź. Roman Polanski was among his students. Another of Ford's protégés was the Polish film director Andrzej Wajda. Ford made his first feature film, Mascot in 1930, after a year of making short silent films. 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 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 Film Polski 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 NKVD secret police, contentiously accusing him of "reactionary" and "antisemitic" views, which resulted in Gabryelski's arrest and torture. Ford and a group of colleagues from the Polish Communist Party rebuilt most of the country's film production infrastructure.
