Lipman, Jerzy

(1922-1983)

   Cinematographer whose name is associated with several great achievements of the Polish School. Lipman started his career in 1953 as a camera operator on Aleksander Ford's Five Boys from Barska Street. Later he worked as a cinematographer on Andrzej Wajda's war films: A Generation (1955), Kanal (1957), and Lotna (1959). His contributions to the Polish School phenomenon also include Jerzy Kawalerowicz's Shadow (1956) and The True End of the Great War (1957), Jerzy Passendorfer's Answer to Violence (1958), and Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water (1962). In the 1960s, Lipman worked on Wajda's epic adaptation of Stefan Zeromski's novel Ashes (1965), Janusz Nasfeter's The Criminal and the Maiden (1963), and films by Jerzy Hoffman and Edward Skórze-wski, such as Gangsters and Philanthropists (1962) and Law and Fist (1964). Hoffman's Pan Michael (1969) became Lipman's last Polish production. In 1968, a year of anti-Semitic excesses in Poland, he left for West Germany where he worked until 1982, mostly for television, and, for example, directed an episode in the series Tatort, also directed by Sam Fuller. Lipman also worked with Aleksander Ford on Dr. Korczak, the Martyr (1974).

   Historical Dictionary of Polish Cinema by Marek Haltof