The British film director, scriptwriter and painter Peter Greenaway has received an honorary doctorate from the Fine Arts Academy in Gdansk.

The citation says that the distinction is for his “lifetime artistic achievement and the humanistic world outlook”.

In his acceptance address, Greenaway spoke of his fascination with the Polish cinema dating to the 1950s. He recalled that the films of Wajda and Polański made a great impression in Britain in the 1950s and 60s, and that he himself remained under great impact of the final sequences of Wajda’s Ashes Diamonds which he saw as a boy of sixteen.

Greenaway said that he even toyed with the idea of studying at the Film School in Łódź.

“In response to my application, I received a reply which suggested that, accustomed as I surely was to good living conditions, I would not feel comfortable in an unheated dormitory, sharing a room with twenty other students who did not like to wash their feet,” Greenway recalled, provoking bursts of laughter among the students and staff of the Academy.

Peter Greenaway also visited the Town Gallery in Gdańsk where an exhibition of his 150 drawings inspired by the Biblical Deluge is currently on display.

Greenaway has been a frequent visitor to Poland in recent years. His 2007 film Nightwatching was a co-production with Poland. Next month he will direct a show inaugurating the Copernicus Science Centre in Warsaw. (mk)