Representatives of the province and the city attended the ceremony:
* Deputy Chairwoman of the Łódź Province Assembly, Magdalena Spólnicka
* First Deputy Mayor of the City of Łódź, Adam Pustelnik.

The first part was led by Monika Talarczyk, PhD, Chairwoman of the School Committee for Degrees, and Professor Katarzyna Mąka-Malatyńska, Vice-Rector for Science and Artistic Creativity, who read the oath in Latin.

Certificates of awarding the higher level doctoral degree were received by:
Tomasz Michałowski
Kacper Zamarło

Certificates of awarding the doctoral degree were received by:
Ewa Audykowska-Wiśniewska
Marcin Bastkowski
Leszek Dawid
Agnieszka Goniszewska
Denijal Hasanović
Marek Kałużyński
Mariusz Kuś
Mateusz Łasowski
Jakub Margosiak
Piotr Matysiak
Aleksandra Mikołajczyk
Joanna Osyda
Maciej Pawliński
Aneta Ptak-Rufino
Wojciech Rawecki
Andrei Zagorodnikov
Magdalena Zambrzycka Mateusz Znaniecki.

Congratulations to all those who received their diplomas!

There was also a moment during the ceremony when the diploma of doctor honoris causa title was presented to Agnieszka Holland.
This title was awarded to her in 2023 during the 75th inauguration of the academic year but unfortunately, the director could not be present at the ceremony at that time.

The laudation, written by Professor Filip Bajon, was read by the Dean of the Faculty of Film and Television Directing, Dr. Leszek Dawid:

"(…) Being aware of the significance of the act of awarding the title of DOCTOR HONORIS CAUSA to Agnieszka Holland, I know that she deserves this honour like few others in the world body of the directing industry. Her outstanding films only confirm the intuition of the most outstanding film experts that films should talk about the most important issues for the human race and must take up the issues most important for our moral condition and our artistic well-being. Agnieszka Holland has been able to combine a journalistic nerve with highly artistic cinema, something that few manage to do because we know well that this is a difficult procedure as these are contradictory elements. The director has often navigated a minefield of contradictions of points of view with courage and imagination, which have favoured her many times, combining to achieve spectacular, intellectual and artistic success. (…)"

The diploma was presented by Lodz Film School Rector, Milenia Fiedler, PhD, and the laureate addressed the School community:

"(…) Łódź has always been a legendary place for me, from which the source of Polish film culture beats almost constantly. I hope it will continue to beat (…). We must fight for hope. It is hard to say that we are fighting for victory when the biggest problem of many countries is predatory polarization. Whoever wins, the other side feels wronged, humiliated and begins to cultivate within itself the seed of bitterness and hatred. And in fact, when we look at today's conflicts, we see that they are mainly fed by fear and hatred. (…) I think that we, as filmmakers, must first and foremost defend goodness, truth and courage in our small area. We are very easy to attack, and Polish film industry is currently going through a fairly clear crisis. Of course, it did not start today. One of the reasons for this is the system of managing culture, which has been going on since the times of the Polish People's Republic and is based on a certain type of authoritarianism. Successive ministers, regardless of their political background, as well as directors subordinate to them, have the arbitrary right to decide who will receive funds for their production and who will not. When this system is not transparent and democratized, also in terms of content, we will always cultivate an attitude of clientelism. Clientelism is particularly easy in film, it kills courage and a sense of agency and subjectivity. (…). The lack of this courage, and in my opinion, courage in the case of creative work must be extreme and radical, is also reflected in our films. We cannot allow this (…). Do not be afraid!"

The Lodz Film School community thanked Agnieszka Holland, an outstanding graduate of the FAMU Film Academy in Prague, for her presence, insightful diagnosis of the condition of the contemporary film industry, and a call for bold directing work with a standing ovation.

Therefore, the crowning moment, which many were perhaps waiting for, was the master class in Agnieszka Holland’s cinema led by Dr. Piotr Pławuszewski, assistant professor at the Institute of Film, Media and Audiovisual Arts of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.

It was a wonderful, not only sentimental, journey through her artistic work. There were questions about specific films, which the director was happy to answer by recalling anecdotes related to them. As she emphasized several times, she loves stories, but the work of a filmmaker, in her opinion, carries a huge burden of responsibility:

"[A sense of humour – editorial note] is something that saves us from taking ourselves too seriously. We know that each new film is a great responsibility, and also a financial one. This is a burden that some people are not willing to realize, but I think we need to be aware of it, because (…) it is money, public funds which were entrusted to us by people or institutions. The responsibility is threefold: for the artifact that we create – will it be suitable for living?; for the money we spend and also for the crew we work with. (…) The sense of responsibility and the fear that this time it will not work out accompany us until the end. (…)".

The laureate eagerly talked about the beginnings of her directing career, the student films she made at FAMU, and her first film ambitions:

"When I was 15, I thought about being a painter, but I couldn’t express myself enough in painting. I needed other elements: telling stories, inventing narratives, reading books, and power. (…) I had the leader gene and I said to myself then – this is a film director. From that moment, from the age of 15, I did everything to prepare for the profession and the exams for film school."

Questions about masters, especially literary ones – Franz Kafka or Fyodor Dostoyevsky – became the starting point for reflections on human nature:

"It was enough to read Dostoyevsky with understanding in early youth for a person to understand that the most fierce battle takes place in the human soul, between good and evil. Indeed, apart from clinical psychopaths, people have the potential for good and evil, roughly equal. Except that evil is much easier to cultivate. You don't have to water it, you just have to give it permission and it grows like a weed - like Sosnowski's hogweed. All over Europe and the world. I have always been interested in this balance. "

Agnieszka Holland talked about many elements of reality, not only artistic and cultural, revealing to us the autobiographical threads which shaped her as a filmmaker and a person.

For this uncompromising lesson of Cinema and Life – we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. !

ed. Małgorzata Lisiecka-Muniak
photos: Mikołaj Zacharow