The Testimony about Pope John Paul II
September 14, 2008 by grzegorz.piechota
Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza co-produced a new documentary movie on John Paul II. Its worldwide premiere will be held in Vatican on Oct. 16, 2008, in the presence of pope Benedict XVI, writes Malgorzata Skowronska, Gazeta’s special project manager.
UPDATE: Read latest news about this movie: Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz reveals that Pope John Paul II was wounded by a priest in 1982 and kept it in secret.
The movie titled ”The Testimony”, or “A Life With Karol”, is based on memoirs of cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the Polish pope’s personal secretary for 40 years and his closest friend.
His memoirs Written with Italian-Polish journalist Gian Franco Svidercoschi were published in 2007 as a book. It has already appeared in more than a dozen languages, and has made the best-seller lists in Italy and Poland – where it was distributed by Agora, the publisher of the largest quality newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, and has reached a circulation of over 1 million copies.
”A Life with Karol” abounds to the key role John Paul II played in some of the most consequential events of his time and offers a close look at the Karol Wojtyla’s private life – 27 years as pope and his 12 years as a priest and Polish archbishop before that.
The movie
The premiere in Vatican will be a highlight of the 30th anniversary of John Paul II’s pontificate organised by the Holy See. The official event will take place in the Paul VI hall and will be attended by pope Benedict XVI, as well as guests from all over the world.
The next day, on October 17th, the movie will hit theatres in Poland.
The movie is in fact a docu-drama, a cross between a documentary and a standard movie. Some events, for example from the Pope’s childhood, are performed by actors and have been shot in Poland, Italy, France and Germany.
Cardinal Dziwisz himself plays a role in the movie. His memoirs are supported with documents, photos and videos from Vatican’s archives that have never been shown publicly before.
Dziwisz and Svidercoschi have collaborated with a movie director Pawel Pitera on the script.
The movie’s narrator is a British actor Michael York who starred in ”Cabaret” (1972), ”The Three Musketeers” (1973, 1974 and 1989), ”Jesus of Nazareth” (1979).
The music is written by a Greek composer Vangelis - best known for his Academy Award winning score for ”Chariots of Fire” (1981), and scores for ”Blade Runner” (1982) and ”1492: Conquest of Paradise” (1992) – and a Polish musician Robert Janson.
The movie has been produced by TBA Group in association with Vatican’s publishing house Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Poland’s Agora (publisher of Gazeta Wyborcza), NewCast/ZenithOptimedia Group and Network Production.
Trailer of the movie is available on its official site (in Polish):
The book
A native Pole like John Paul II, cardinal Dziwisz is now the archbishop of Krakow, a post held by the pope before his election in 1978. Dziwisz was elevated to cardinal in 2006 by pope Benedict XVI.
The book ”A Life with Karol. My forty-year friendship with the Man who become Pope” is an intimate and affectionate portrait of John Paul II and reveals new details about the opinions, hopes, fears, and dramatic life of this public man.
“I had accompanied him for almost forty years: twelve in Cracow and then twenty-seven in Rome. I was always with him, always at his side. Now, in the moment of death, he’d gone on alone. . . .And now? Who is accompanying him on the other side?,” asks Stanislaw Dziwisz.
The cardinal and Karol Wojtyla first met in in 1957, when Dziwisz was a young seminarian.
In 1966, three years after Dziwisz was ordained by Wojtyla, the future pope called him as his personal secretary. Dziwisz asked when he should start. “Today will work,” Wojtyla replied.
Dziwisz was by John Paul’s side at all the key moments of his papacy, including the assassination attempt in St. Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981, when the author caught the stricken pontiff in his arms, then gave him last rites on the operating table.
After John Paul’s recovery, Dziwisz went with him to visit his imprisoned assailant, Mehmet Ali Agca. To the pope’s distress, the Turkish gunman did not ask for forgiveness, but wanted only to know: “So why aren’t you dead?” Having heard that John Paul attributed his survival to intervention by the Madonna of Fatima, Ali Agca “was afraid that this powerful goddess would avenge herself on him and ‘get rid of him,”‘ Dziwisz writes.
John Paul concluded that the leaders of the Soviet Union had ordered his assassination out of fear (ultimately well-founded) that he would inspire an anti-Communist revolution in Poland. “Don’t all roads, however disparate they are, lead to the KGB?” Dziwisz writes.
The book has lighter moments, too, including an account of John Paul’s surreptitious skiing excursions early in his papacy.
Accompanied by a few priests and no bodyguards, the pope rode in the back seat of an ordinary car, with a front-seat passenger holding open a newspaper to shield him from view. On the slopes, John Paul “was dressed like everyone else: parka, cap, goggles,” yet long went unrecognized. “After all, who could imagine that a pope would go skiing?” Dziwisz writes. An astonished 10-year-old boy finally blew the pontiff’s cover.
Dziwisz describes the pope’s daily life, including his dining habits. “He wouldn’t take much, but he would try everything,” though he had a weakness for Italian sweets and coffee. His preferences in television viewing included documentaries and the news, “but he wasn’t adverse to movies.”
For the second half of his 26-year reign, John Paul was increasingly plagued by Parkinson’s disease and other ailments, and actually considered resigning on his 80th birthday in the year 2000. Though he decided against it, Dziwisz writes, he “did work out a procedure for resigning should he no longer be able to carry out his papal mission.”
The cardinal’s account of John Paul’s last hours is filled with poignant detail. A picture of the pope’s mother and father sat on his nightstand. He died listening to a priest read from the Gospel of John. Afterward, those present sang a hymn of praise, not mourning. “We wanted to thank God for the gift he had given us,” Dziwisz writes.
How a newspaper publisher has entered the movie industry?
”A Life with Karol” is not the first movie made with Gazeta Wyborcza’s involvment.
In 2007 the newspaper co-operated with producers of “The Team”, the first TV series in Europe that debuted in the newspaper, instead of television.
By the way, this TV series is in the semi-finals of the International Emmy Awards 2008 competition. Official nominees will be announced on October 13th, 2008, in Cannes.
As Alfred Hitchcock taught, it started with an earthquake. In the middle of the night phones started ringing in several appartments. People woke up and learned that some forgotten files had been found in the archives of communist secret services. There was a rumour that those files would prove that current prime minister, well known former dissident was in fact a communist spy in the past. The government fell into the crisis…
“The Team” was a political fiction. It showed a government and reality of ruling a country from insider’s perspective. It touched with the most important issues of today’s politics in Poland, but there were no easy links to parties, people or events.
“The Team” was co-directed by Cannes-winner and Oscar-nominee Agnieszka Holland famous for her movies like “Europa Europa” (1991), ”Olivier, Olivier” (1992), “Secret Garden” (1993).
It starred the most popular Polish actors, ie. Andrzej Seweryn who starred in Robert Enrico’s “The French Revolution” (1989) and Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” (1993).
The screenplay was co-written by a journalist covering politics.
It was the first such series in Poland’s history after the collapse of communism – the topic, the quality, the budget was outstanding. So was outstanding the way it debuted.
Before the first episode was broadcasted in any television channel, it was distributed on DVDs to 60,000 newstands, shops and petrol stations together with Gazeta Wyborcza.
So on Friday, September 7th, 2007, readers could buy their favourite newspaper for 40 eurocents and – if they wanted – they could also buy a DVD for 3 euros.
The same episode was broadcasted in the largest Polish commercial TV Polsat for the first time next Thursday (Sept. 13th).
On Friday, Sept. 14, Gazeta was selling DVDs with the next episodes, scheduled to be aired on TV the following week. And so on – the whole series consisted of 14 episodes.
Gazeta cooperated with the production team from the start.
We were involved in creating and executing the marketing and PR strategy for the series. For example we created its official website full of multimedia content like video interviews, clips from the backstage, stories on directors, screenplay writers and actors.
The series and the collection was promoted in all our media: Gazeta, our freesheet Metro, our magazines, radio stations and our billboards.
As media play important role in today’s politics, they played also a role in the serie. In “The Team” you could see people who learned about a change of the prime minister from our newspaper, or listening to Gazeta’s radio, or logging in to Gazeta’s internet news portal.
The series proved to be a financial success and had a great impact on the Polish political, artistic and newspaper scenes.
In the campaign before the October 2007 elections politicians and journalists used movie characters as a reference and talking points. We were discussing if politics could be ever fair? Where were the limits of propaganda?
This innovative model opened new revenue opportunities for all the parties involved – for a newspaper, for television stations, for production companies and for artists. Gazeta’s publisher decided to go further into entertainment business and published numerous premiere music records in a similar model.
The model proved that newspapers had an access to very effective distribution chain (newsstands around a country) and marketing power of itself.
(Article contributed by Malgorzata Skowronska, a special project manager at Agora, the publisher of Gazeta Wyborcza)
Tagged: business model, campaign, Gazeta, innovation, Marketing, newspaper
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Is this book and movie in the English language?
@Arlene
The book “A life with Karol” has been published in English in March 2008 by Doubleday. It is available for example on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Life-Karol-Forty-Year-Friendship-Became/dp/0385523742
As far as I know, the movie has not been yet available in English version, either in cinemas, nor on DVD. You can follow the news on the official website: http://www.testimonyfilm.com/Testimonyfilm/0,0.html
There was a showing of the film in Chicago in English. Now a DVD is available at:
http://www.testimonycommemorativedvd.com/ The film is very special and worth having in your library as the legacy of John Paul II needs to be preserved.