Actor’s retrospective. Our guest will be Marek Kondrat. We will show movies and TV theatre productions with his participation and invite our viewers to participate in a meeting with the actor.

MAREK KONDRAT | The son of an actor became an actor – and we can surely say that countless theatre performances and films benefited from it. Born in 1950 in Cracow, he debuted at age 11 in “Story of the Golden Boot” by Sylwester Chęciński. After graduating from the Acting Faculty at the Warsaw Theatre School PWST in Warsaw in 1972, he immediately started working on the stage. He played in the Teatr Śląski in Katowice, a year later he became a member of Warsaw’s Teatr Dramatyczny team, then Teatr Nowy, in the ’90s he played in Teatr Ateneum. The diversity of the institutions where he developed his talent is followed by the wide range of roles he played: from the decadent Count Charmant in Gombrowicz’s “Operretta” directed by Maciej Prus, through heroes of comedies by Molier and Fredro, to Kordian directed by Gustaw Holoubek.

Marek Kondrat admits: “I like theatre very much, but I also want to fulfil my ambitions elsewhere: in cinema, radio, television, cabaret.” The silver screen fell in love with his charm and charisma. One of the actor’s first important film appearances will be the role of Roman Boryczko in “Hotel Pacific” (1976), directed by Janusz Majewski, awarded by the “Film” magazine for the best debut. A year later he will play a young captain in “The Shadow Line,” directed by Andrzej Wajda. His best role of those years remains the Stalinist tutor from ”Shivers” (1981), directed by Wojciech Marczewski. Kondrat will manage to show the inner struggle of the protagonist, simultaneously making him a study of fanaticism, all by frugal means.

The entire ’80s were marked by roles in comedies and political dramas, requiring finesse and actor’s intuition. His partnership with Wajda will be continued at the set of two epic films relating to the situation in Poland in a more or less direct manner: “Man of Iron” (1981) and „Dantona” (1982), portraying the French revolution. Kondrat will take the opportunity to show his acting verve in less serious films. “The House of Fools” (1983) by Marek Koterski will begin the over-20-years’ partnership of the artists. The first attempt to become the character of Adaś Miauczyński will require a lot of self-control and imagination to create the nightmare of everyday life planned by the director. In “H.M. Deserters” by Majewski, Kondrat will imbue the character of the soldier with humour and a note of rakish spontaneity. He will develop those assets of his emploi with the title role in “Colonel Kwiatkowski” (1995) by Kazimierz Kutz.

A turning point in his career came with the role of a cynical communist-era secret police officer in “Pigs” (1992) by Władysław Pasikowski. This success resulted in a series of roles in which the actor maintained a reputation of the main actor of new Polish action cinema: in the “Extradition” (1995) and the year later “Extradition II,” “Night Graffiti” (1996) by Maciej Dutkiewicz and “Operation Simoom” by Pasikowski from 1999. The same year Kondrat will direct his first and until now only film, “Father’s Law,” about  a father’s revenge for his daughter’s rape, left unpunished by the court of justice.

He gained the most popularity thanks to his role in Marek Koterski’s “Day of the Wacko,” a film about the lousy life of a lonely and underestimated intellectual, preceding the even more bitter ”We’re All Christs.” Several years ago, Kondrat suspended his acting career and devoted himself to his second passion: the promotion of wine-drinking culture; he imports and runs a chain of shops.