Wanda Jakubowska

Founding member of Poland's Society of Devotees of the Artistic Film (START) in the 1920s. Jakubowska began her career making documentaries, notably "The Awakening" (1934), on which she collaborated with Aleksander Ford. The negative of her first feature, "On the River Niemen," was destroyed during the burning of Warsaw in 1939 and Jakubowska herself was confined in both Auschwitz and Ravensbruck; she survived to become one of Poland's leading directors after the close of WWII. Several of her films drew on her experiences in the concentration camps, particularly the award-winning "The Last Stage" (1948), which helped attract international attention to the burgeoning Polish film industry.