The leading film animator in Poland today, Jerzy Kucia is known throughout the world for brooding, technically imaginative animated films that utilize drawings and photos to create a total experience of dream and memory. "Jerzy Kucia is an artist who is totally committed to expressing himself through the motion of his textural shapes without traditional cartoon characters and without `telling a story.' He is a true expressionist in animated art and aims to reveal the invisible and to witness the passage of time. Emotion plays an important part in his work and his attitude to a problem is to solve it by appealing to the viewer's emotions. If there is also a philosophical message arising out of the experience, so much the better, but...what he aims to reveal is his interest in states of mind through the manipulation of abstract forms. Most of Kucia's films are executed in tones of black and white, a style which depends entirely upon effects of light and shade. Starting with a normal, almost monotonous image, he develops it into a panorama of detailed impressions where matters of ordinary life are observed, enlarged and rearranged" (J. Halas, Masters of Animation). A screenwriter, graphic artist, Director of the Animated Film Studio at the Fine Arts Academy in Cracow and President of the Polish Animation Association, Kucia's films have won Grand Prizes at major film festivals including Annecy, Oberhausen, Chicago and Varna. His graphic art has been exhibited at the second and third International Graphics Biennial in Cracow. He received first prize from the Ministry of Culture and Art, and the Award of the City of Cracow. He was honored with a complete retrospective of his films at the 1982 Zagreb Festival of International Animation.