Stefan Kudelski

The award is presented to the artists and film professionals of Polish descent for their outstanding contribution to the art of film beyond Poland.

This is the first time the award is given to an individual who represents technical aspects of filmmaking. The award recipients are selected by the international PFFA Board of Governors headed by Christopher Kamyszew, the festival's founder and honorary chairman. Polish Film Festival in America is the world's largest annual panorama of Polish film outside of Poland; in its twenty years the festival has shown nearly one thousand films made by Polish filmmakers. Stefan Kudelski was born in Warsaw on February 27, 1929. His family had an engineering background background, and included, in particular, several technical college professors. His father studied as an architect, but his principle field of work was in the chemical industry. His mother was an anthropologist.

In 1939, the Kudelski family fled in front of the Germans, and via Hungary they reached France, where Stefan Kudelski continued his education. His father, being an officer in active service, organized a resistance network, which fell in 1943, but the family managed to escape to Switzerland. Both his father and his mother were honored for their activities during this period with the French Croix de Guerre.

Established in Geneva, young Stefan continued his studies at the Ecole Florimont. He became interested in electronics before he had finished his secondary school there. He built up a small laboratory at home and worked on the problems of generating extra high tensions by means of high frequency oscillators, with a view to electrostatic dust extraction from the air. In 1948 he started studying at the Ecole Polytechnique in Lausanne, in the Physical Engineering faculty.

About this time, the first magnetic recorders were put on the market. Stefan Kudelski realized the potential of using the memory incorporated in a magnetic tape for the automatic control of machine tools. In 1950 his first commercial tape recorder was made. It was called the Nagra. In 1953, the model was improved by incorporating mechanical filters to smooth out these variations in tape speed. This was the birth of the Nagra II, which aroused substantial interest of the movie industry. One of the first full length feature films to use the Nagra during shooting was "Black Orpheus." Kudelski examined several systems for synchronizing the camera with the tape recorder. The camera generates a signal which is recorded on the same tape as the sound, thereby reducing the power consumption enormously. From 1956, he researched into the possibility of a self-contained tape recorder without a centrifugal speed governor. This resulted in the Nagra III, which was launched in 1958. The success of this model was enormous, and enabled the Kudelski organization to develop from a specialized laboratory to a true industrial establishment.

Stefan Kudelski's inventions were considered revolutionary throughout the movie industry. Nagra allowed precise synchronization for audio tape with film, providing filmmakers with studio sound quality during on-location filming. For his achievements Stefan Kudelski received four Oscars: three Scientific or Technical Awards in 1965, 1977, 1978 and Gordon E. Sawyer Award in 1990 from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Also he was given two Emmy Awards and Gold Medals from L. Warner, Audio Engineering Society, Lyra and Eurotechnica.

Stefan Kudelski retired in 1991 and was succeeded by his son, Andre Kudelski, as a Chairman and CEO of the Kudelski Group.

He has been always proud of his Polish heritage and family roots.

The Wings Award recipients in the past were: Andres Bukowinski, Pawel Edelman, Agnieszka Holland, Slawomir Idziak, Jan A.P. Kaczmarek, Janusz Kaminski, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Wojciech Kilar, Jan Lenica, Roman Polanski, Andrzej Seweryn. The last year Wings Award winner Allan Starski, Oscar-winning art director, will be honored on stage at this year's Opening Night ceremony on November 8th at 7:00 pm. in AMC River East 21 Movie Theater. 

For more information, please, contact Ewa Domeredzka, Director, Polish Film Festival in America 773-486-9611/12