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Krzysztof Kieslowski
Director / Screenwriter
1941 - 1996 
Born June 27, Warsaw, Poland
Key Production Countries: Poland, France 
Key Genres: Drama, Psychological Drama, Romantic Drama
Key Collaborators: Krzystof Piesiewicz (Screenwriter), Zbigniew Preisner (Composer), Halina Doborowolska (Production Designer), Ryszard Chutkowski (Producer), Aleksander Bardini (Leading Character Player), Artur Barcis (Leading Character Player), Slawomir Idziak (Cinematographer), Jerzy Stuhr (Character Player), Marin Karmitz (Producer), Ewa Smal (Editor)

Highly Recommended: Dekalog (1988)*, A Short Film About Love (1988), Three Colours: Red (1994)*
Recommended: Camera Buff (1979), No End (1985), A Short Film About Killing (1987)*, The Double Life of Veronique (1991)*, Three Colours: Blue (1993)*
Worth a Look: Blind Chance (1981), Short Working Day (1981), Three Colours: White (1993)*
* Listed in TSPDT's 1,000 Greatest Films section.

 
 
 
Links: [ Amazon ] [ IMDB ] [ All-Movie Guide ] [ Senses of Cinema: Great Directors ] [ Film Reference ] [ Kieslowski Web Network ] [ Kino Kieslowski ] [ A Kieslowski Homepage ] [ Krzysztof Kieslowski's Art of Film ] [ kamera Article (2006) ] [ Close-Up Film Article (2008) ]
Books: [ Kieslowski on Kieslowski ] [ Krzysztof Kieslowski ] [ Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski ]
  
Dekalog (1988)A Short Film About Love (1988)Three Colours: Red (1994)Camera Buff (1979)
 
     
  "There is no doubting his feeling for things seen and heard; there is no question but that he is a filmmaker, and one following in the steps of Bresson. But, for me, Kieslowski frequently runs the risk of being precious, mannered, and so cold as to forbid touching." - David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)  
     
  "It seems that most Eastern European directors of the past 30 years have been rebels of one kind or another, and Kieslowski was certainly no exception... To the Western eye, Kieslowski's films offend less against the system than those of some of his contemporaries. And, although in life he was something of a pessimist, his films do not always reflect that attitude. Their characters are constantly faced with making moral decisions and often find the right endings for their lives." - David Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999)  
     
  "Former documentarist Kieslowski's early features were noted for their simple, robust realism, but in his later work, he developed a more ornate, expressionist style, directing attention with painstaking precision to the immediate physical reality of his characters' lives, in order to illuminate an inner world of emotion, thought and premonition." - Geoff Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999)  
     
  "To tell you the truth, in my work, love is always in opposition to the elements. It creates dilemmas. It brings in suffering. We can't live with it, and we can't live without it. You'll rarely find a happy ending in my work." - Krzysztof Kieslowski  
     
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"Of all European directors of recent decades, Krzysztof Kieslowski is the most obvious legatee of the high seriousness that we associate with Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky. He pushed traditional European art cinema in the face of Hollywood dominance and the burgeoning auteur cinemas from other parts of the world... Dekalog made Kieslowski's name, and provided the material that led to A Short Film About Killing (1987) and A Short Film About Love (1988). In these films Kieslowski began to elaborate a theme of interconnectedness that would be key to his oeuvre. If his narrative reticence and obscure images have generated criticism, they have equally been praised for the thematic ambiguity and density they bring to his work." - Richard Armstrong, The Rough Guide to Film

 
 
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See Also
Ingmar Bergman
Robert Bresson
Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Atom Egoyan
Agnieszka Holland
Jacques Rivette
Abbas Kiarostami
Roberto Rossellini
Jerzy Skolimowski
Francois Truffaut
Andrzej Wajda
Krzysztof Zanussi
 
Krzysztof Kieslowski's Favourites
Citizen Kane (1941) Orson Welles, The 400 Blows (1959) François Truffaut, Intimate Lighting (1965) Ivan Passer, Ivan's Childhood (1962) Andrei Tarkovsky, Kes (1969) Ken Loach, The Kid (1921) Charles Chaplin, A Man Escaped (1956) Robert Bresson, The Musicians (1960) Kazimierz Karabasz, The Pram (1963) Bo Widerberg, La Strada (1954) Federico Fellini. Source: Time Out (1995)
 
 
 
         
         

 

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