Prof. Mirosław Przylipiak - an eminent historian and film theorist, founder of the Institute for Cultural Studies at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Gdańsk, initiator and first director of the Andrzej Wajda Film Center at the University of Gdańsk - has been awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta. The award, granted for outstanding contributions to the development of Polish film studies and for achievements in scientific research and teaching, was presented by Pomeranian Voivode Beata Rutkiewicz.

Prof. Mirosław Przylipiak is a renowned film scholar and author of numerous monographs on cinema and audiovisual culture, such as Kino stylu zerowego (Zero Style Cinema), Kino najnowsze (The Latest Cinema) and Poetyka kina dokumentalnego (The Poetics of Documentary Cinema), for which he received the Bolesław Michałek Award for the best film book of the year. He has published three volumes devoted to the American direct cinema movement, focusing on Canadian and American Direct Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. He has translated nearly 30 books, mainly in the fields of psychology and film, and has also made several documentaries and educational television series. He is also an academic lecturer and the founder of the Institute for Cultural Research at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Gdańsk.

The film expert has once again been awarded a Fulbright scholarship. He will spend the coming academic year at Claremont Colleges in the US, researching the production conditions of puzzle films. ‘I will try to answer the question of how it happened that American cinema, always considered easy to understand and accessible, began to produce a large number of difficult, complex, and obscure films, such as Mulholland Drive and Donnie Darko,’ said prof. M. Przylipiak. ‘I will look for answers to this question in documents related to their production process and in conversations with the people who decided on their financing and implementation.’

The Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta was established in 1921. It is awarded for outstanding services to the state and society, and in particular for achievements in public activity undertaken for the benefit of the country, including outstanding scientific work.