Jerzy Janicki

Did you know that Jerzy Janicki...

• is considered as the precursor of a new genre in   European radio: family saga, which was  almost half a century ahead of the family soap operas popular nowadays. "Matysiakowie" was broadcast continuously since 1956, every week for 50 years?
• is considered the creator of Polish TV series?  
• was the author of several dozen radio plays as well as scripts for feature films and TV series?
• from the end of the 1980s, when censorship no longer applied, he started making films about Lviv?
• was the author of many volumes of short stories, and his filmed works in Bieszczady - such as "Wolna sobota", "Hasło", "Kino objazdowe", "Niespotykanie spookjn człowiek" - have their share in the mythologization of the Bieszczady Mountains, where he eagerly rested from active life?

He was born on August 10, 1928 in Czortków (Ukraine today) and died on April 15, 2007 in Warsaw. He took the first steps of his creative career in Trzebownisko, where he arrived in 1952. The result of this visit was the book "Sąsiedzi", published in 1954 - a fictionalized report on the recent history of the village, especially its first post-war years. At the end of the book, Janicki emphasized: "Sąsiedzi" are not my own invention, I did not invent the story (...) of the village by sucking a fountain pen over my desk, but I wrote down in a few notebooks while listening to the stories and memories of Trzebownisko's peasants.

He was persuaded to visit the Bieszczady Mountains in the 1960s by Marek Sart, the author of the music featuring in the film "Milion za Laurę". He often returned to this magical part of Poland, and since it was impossible to visit Kresy, for him the Bieszczady Mountains constituted a glimpse of his beloved eastern Galicia. At the beginning of the 90s, he bought a property in Chmiel, in the Lutowiska commune, which later became his and his family's second home. He created extensive fragments of scenarios in the Bieszczady Mountains, e.g. to the series "Dom" and "Ballady o Januszku" as well as episodes of the radio novel "Matysiakowie". In Zatwarnica in Bieszczady, Janicki organized screenings of films about the Bieszczady Mountains with the participation of the most outstanding Polish actors and directors. In recognition of his merits, in Cisna, a plate with his name was nailed to the chapel in memory of the most famous people in Bieszczady. Janicki was an Honorary Citizen of the Lutowiska commune. Due to this, on May 2, 2010, on the third anniversary of his death, from the initiative of the Lutowiska commune, a monument was unveiled in his memory by his wife Krystyna. The Commune Council also adopted a resolution to name the Commune Cultural Center in Lutowiska after Jerzy Janicki.