Kieślowski was born inWarsaw, Poland, the son of Barbara (née Szonert) and Roman Kieślowski.[6] He grew up in several small towns, moving wherever his engineer father, atuberculosis patient, could find treatment. He was raisedRoman Catholic and retained what he called a "personal and private" relationship with God.[7] At sixteen, he attended a firefighters' training school but dropped out after three months. Without any career goals, he then entered the College for Theatre Technicians in Warsaw in 1957 because it was run by a relative. He wanted to become a theatre director, but lacked the required bachelor's degree for the theatre department, so he chose to study film as an intermediate step.
Leaving college and working as a theatrical tailor, Kieślowski applied to theŁódź Film School, which hasRoman Polanski andAndrzej Wajda among its alumni. He was rejected twice. To avoidcompulsory military service during this time, he briefly became an art student, and also went on a drastic diet to make himself medically unfit for service. After several months of avoiding the draft, he was accepted to the school's directing department in 1964, on his third attempt.[8] He attended Łódź Film School until 1968 and, despite state censorship and interdiction on foreign travel, was able to travel around Poland for his documentary research and filming.[8] Kieślowski lost his interest in theatre and decided to make documentary films.
Kieślowski's early documentaries focused on the everyday lives of city dwellers, workers, and soldiers. Though he was not an overtly political filmmaker, he soon found that attempting to depict Polish life accurately brought him into conflict with the authorities. His television filmWorkers '71: Nothing About Us Without Us, which showed workers discussing the reasons for the mass strikes of 1970, was only shown in a drastically censored form. AfterWorkers '71, he turned his eye on the authorities themselves inCurriculum Vitae, a film that combined documentary footage ofPolitburo meetings with a fictional story about a man under scrutiny by the officials. Though Kieślowski believed the film's message was anti-authoritarian, he was criticized by his colleagues for cooperating with the government in its production.[9]Kieślowski later said that he abandoned documentary filmmaking due to two experiences: the censorship ofWorkers '71, which caused him to doubt whether truth could be told literally under an authoritarian regime, and an incident during the filming ofStation (1981) in which some of his footage was nearly used as evidence in a criminal case. He decided that fiction not only allowed more artistic freedom but could portray everyday life more truthfully.[10][11]
His first non-documentary feature,Personnel (1975), was made for television and won him first prize at theMannheim Film Festival. BothPersonnel and his next feature,The Scar (Blizna), were works ofsocial realism with large casts:Personnel was about technicians working on a stage production, based on his early college experience, andThe Scar showed the upheaval of a small town by a poorly planned industrial project. These films were shot in a documentary style with many nonprofessional actors; like his earlier films, they portrayed everyday life under the weight of an oppressive system, but without overt commentary.Camera Buff (Amator, 1979) (which won the grand prize at the11th Moscow International Film Festival)[12] andBlind Chance (Przypadek, 1981) continued along similar lines, but focused more on the ethical choices faced by a single character rather than a community. During this period, Kieślowski was considered part of a loose movement with other Polish directors of the time, includingJanusz Kijowski,Andrzej Wajda, andAgnieszka Holland, called theCinema of moral anxiety. His links with these directors, Holland in particular, caused concern within the Polish government, and each of his early films was subjected tocensorship and enforced re-shooting/re-editing, if not banned outright. For example,Blind Chance was not released domestically until 1987, almost six years after it had been completed.
No End (Bez końca, 1984) was perhaps his most clearly political film, depicting political trials in Poland during martial law, from the unusual point of view of a lawyer's ghost and his widow. At the time it was harshly criticized by both the government, dissidents, and the church.[8] Starting withNo End, Kieślowski closely collaborated with two people, the composerZbigniew Preisner and the trial lawyerKrzysztof Piesiewicz, whom Kieślowski met while researching political trials under martial law for a planned documentary on the subject. Piesiewicz co-wrote the screenplays for all of Kieślowski's subsequent films.[8] Preisner is best known for collaborating with Kieślowski on the scores for the Three Colors trilogy.[13]
Preisner provided the musical score forNo End and most subsequent of Kieślowski's films and often plays a prominent part. Many of Preisner's pieces are referred to and discussed by the films' characters as being the work of the (fictional) Dutch composer "Van den Budenmayer".[14]
Dekalog (1988), a series of ten short films set in a Warsaw tower block, each nominally based on one of theTen Commandments, was created for Polish television with funding fromWest Germany; it is now one of the most critically acclaimed film cycles of all time. Co-written by Kieślowski and Piesiewicz, the ten one-hour-long episodes had originally been intended for ten different directors, but Kieślowski found himself unable to relinquish control over the project and directed all episodes himself. Episodes five and six were released internationally in a longer form asA Short Film About Killing andA Short Film About Love respectively. Kieślowski had also planned to shoot a full-length version of Episode 9 under the titleA Short Film About Jealousy,[15] but exhaustion eventually prevented him from making what would have been his thirteenth film in less than a year.
Kieślowski's last four films, his most commercially successful, were foreign co-productions, made mainly with money from France and in particular from Romanian-born producerMarin Karmitz. These focused on moral and metaphysical issues along lines similar toDekalog andBlind Chance but on a more abstract level, with smaller casts, more internal stories, and less interest in communities. Poland appeared in these films mostly through the eyes of European outsiders.[16]
At the time of his death, Kieślowski was working with his longterm collaborator Piesiewicz on a second trilogy: Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. After his death, the scripts were adapted and produced by three different directors:Heaven byTom Tykwer in 2002;[18][19]Hell ("L'Enfer") byDanis Tanović in 2005;[20] andPurgatory in 2007.[21]
The house at 23 Główna Street inSokołowsko where Kieślowski lived
Kieślowski married his lifelong love, Maria (Marysia) Cautillo, on 21 January 1967 during his final year in film school. They had a daughter, and remained married until his death.
He characterized himself as having "one good characteristic, I am apessimist. I always imagine the worst. To me, the future is a black hole." He has been described as "conveying the sadness of a world-weary sage", "a brooding intellectual and habitual pessimist". When visiting the United States, he was amazed at "the pursuit of empty talk combined with a very high degree ofself-satisfaction".[7] Film director and Kieślowski's friend,Agnieszka Holland, revealed that he used to experiencedepressive states.[22]
He described himself as anagnostic; however, he considered theOld Testament and the BiblicalDecalogue as a moral compass in difficult times.[23]
On 14 March 1996, less than two years after he had retired, Kieślowski died at age 54 duringopen-heart surgery following aheart attack.[24] He was interred inPowązki Cemetery in Warsaw. His grave has a sculpture of the thumb and forefingers of two hands forming an oblong space; the classic view as if through a film camera. The smallsculpture is in blackmarble on apedestal slightly over a metre tall. The slab with Kieślowski's name and dates lies below.[25]
Bust of Kieślowski, Celebrity Alley, Kielce, Poland
Kieślowski remains one of Europe's most influential directors, his works included in the study of film classes at universities throughout the world. The 1993 bookKieślowski on Kieślowski describes his life and work in his own words, based on interviews by Danusia Stok. He is the subject of abiographical film,Krzysztof Kieślowski: I'm So-So (1995), directed by Krzysztof Wierzbicki.
After Kieślowski's death,Harvey Weinstein, then head ofMiramax Films, which distributed the last four Kieślowski films in the US, wrote a eulogy for him inPremiere magazine.[26]
Though he had claimed to be retiring afterThree Colours, at the time of his death, Kieślowski was working on a new trilogy co-written with Piesiewicz, consisting ofHeaven,Hell, andPurgatory and inspired byDante'sThe Divine Comedy. As was originally intended forDekalog, the scripts were ostensibly intended to be given to other directors for filming, but Kieślowski's untimely death means it is unknown whether he might have broken his self-imposed retirement to direct the trilogy himself. The only completed screenplay,Heaven, was filmed byTom Tykwer and premiered in 2002 at theBerlin International Film Festival. The other two scripts existed only as thirty-page treatments at the time of Kieślowski's death; Piesiewicz has since completed these screenplays, withHell, directed by Bosnian directorDanis Tanović and starringEmmanuelle Béart, released in 2005.Purgatory, about a photographer killed in the Bosnian war, remains unproduced.[27] The 2007 filmNadzieja (Hope), directed by Ibo Kurdo and Stanislaw Mucha, also scripted by Piesiewicz, has been incorrectly identified as the third part of the trilogy, but is in fact, an unrelated project.[28]
Jerzy Stuhr, who starred in several Kieślowski films and co-wroteCamera Buff, filmed his own adaptation of an unfilmed Kieślowski script asThe Big Animal (Duże zwierzę) in 2000.
It comes from a deep-rooted conviction that if there is anything worthwhile doing for the sake of culture, then it is touching on subject matters and situations which link people, and not those that divide people. There are too many things in the world which divide people, such as religion, politics, history, and nationalism. ... Feelings are what link people together, because the word 'love' has the same meaning for everybody. Or 'fear', or 'suffering'. We all fear the same way and the same things. And we all love in the same way. That's why I tell about these things, because in all other things I immediately find division.
In the foreword toDekalog: The Ten Commandments, American filmmakerStanley Kubrick wrote:[29]
I am always reluctant to single out some particular feature of the work of a major filmmaker because it tends inevitably to simplify and reduce the work. But in this book of screenplays by Krzysztof Kieślowski and his co-author, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, it should not be out of place to observe that they have the very rare ability to dramatize their ideas rather than just talking about them. By making their points through the dramatic action of the story they gain the added power of allowing the audience to discover what's really going on rather than being told. They do this with such dazzling skill, you never see the ideas coming and don't realize until much later how profoundly they have reached your heart.
In 2012,Cyrus Frisch voted forA Short Film About Killing as one of "the best-damned films" with the comment: "In Poland, this film was instrumental in the abolition of the death penalty."[31] Since 1952,Sight & Sound magazine conducts a poll every ten years of the world's finest film directors to determine the Ten Greatest Films of All Time, which has become the most recognised poll of its kind in the world.[32]
Since 2011, the Polish Contemporary Art Foundation In Situ has been organizing The Sokołowsko Film Festival: Hommage à Kieślowski. It is an annual film festival inSokołowsko, where Kieślowski spent a part of his youth, and commemorates the director's work with screenings of his films, as well as films of younger generations of filmmakers both from Poland and Europe, accompanied by creative workshops, panel discussions, performances, exhibitions and concerts.[33]
Kieślowski's star on the Walk of Fame inŁódź, Poland
Krzysztof Kieślowski earned numerous awards and nominations throughout his career, dating back to theKraków Film Festival Golden Hobby-Horse in 1974. The following is a list of awards and nominations earned for his later work.[3]
^Zawiśliński, Stanisław (2011).Kieślowski. Ważne, żeby iść... [Kieślowski: It's Important To Keep Going...] (in Polish). Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Skorpion. p. 317.ISBN978-83-86466-65-8.
^Surmiak-Domańska, Katarzyna (2018).Kieślowski. Zbliżenie [Kieślowski: A Close-Up] (in Polish). Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Agora. p. 378.ISBN978-83-268-2699-3.
Bleeckere, Sylvian de (1994).Levenswaarden en levensverhalen: een studie van de decaloog van Kieślowski. Leuven: Acco.ISBN90-334-2852-0.
Campan, Véronique (1993).Dix breves histoires d'image: le Decalogue de Krzysztof Kieślowski. Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne nouvelle.ISBN2-87854-041-7.
Coates, Paul (1999).Lucid Dreams: The Films of Krzysztof Kieślowski. Wiltshire: Flicks Books.ISBN0-948911-63-8.
Dalla Rosa, Richard (2003).La fascination des doubles: selon La double vie de Véronique de Krzysztof Kieślowski. Sarreguemines: Edition Pierron.ISBN2-7085-0307-3.
Dzieko'nska, El'zbieta (2002).The best of all worlds: public, personal and inner realms in the films of Krzysztof Kieślowski. London: University of London (PhD Thesis).
Enser, Martha (1995).Krzysztof Kieślowski: das Gesamtwerk. Wien: Universitat Diplomarbeit.
Erbstein, Monika.Untersuchungen zur Filmsprache im Werk von Kryzstof Kieślowski. Alfeld: Coppi Verlag.ISBN3-930258-57-9.
Franca, Andrea (1996).Cinema em azul, branco e vermelo: a trilogia de Kieślowski. Rio de Janeiro: Sette Letras.ISBN85-85625-51-1.
Fritz, Heiko (2004).Was von der DDR bleibt oder die produzierte Geschichte mit einem Blick auf das filmwerk von Krzysztof Kieślowski. Oldenberg: Igel Verlag.ISBN3-89621-178-1.
Furdal, Malgorzata, ed. (2001).Remembering Krzysztof: il cinema di Kieślowski. Udine: Centro espressioni cinematografiche; Pordenone: Cinemazero.
Furdal, Malgorzata, Turigliatto, Roberto, eds. (1989).Kieślowski. Torino: Museo nazionale del cinema.
Garbowski, Christopher (1996).Krzysztof Kieślowski's Decalogue series: the problem of the protagonists and their self-transcendence. Boulder: East European Monographs.ISBN0-88033-349-9.
Haltof, Marek (2004).The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieślowski: Variations on Destiny and Chance. London: Wallflower Press.ISBN1-903364-92-2 (hbk)ISBN1-903364-91-4 (pbk).
Insdorf, Annette (2002).Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieślowski. New York: Hyperion Miramax Books.ISBN0-7868-8474-6.
Jazdon, Mikolaj (2002).Dokumenty Kieślowskiego. Pozna'n: Wydawnictwo Pozna'nskie.ISBN83-7177-022-7.
Lesch, Walter; Loretan, Matthias,et al. (1993).Das Gewicht der Gebote und die Moglichkeiten der Kunst: Krzysztof Kieślowskis Dekalog Filme als ethische Modelle. Freiburg, Schweiz: Universitatsverlag; Freiburg: Herder.ISBN3-7278-0910-8 (Univerlag)ISBN3-451-23275-8 (Herder).
Murri, Serafino (1996).Krzysztof Kieślowski. Milan: Il Castoro.ISBN88-8033-061-6.
Rimini, Stefania (2000).L'etica dello sguardo : introduzione al cinema di Krzysztof Kieślowski. Napoli: Liguori.ISBN88-207-2996-2.
Ripa di Meana, Gabriella (1998). La morale dell'altro: scritti sull'inconscio dal Decalogo di Kieślowski. Firenze: Liberal libri.ISBN88-8270-009-7.
Rodriguez Chico, Julio (2004).Azul, Blanco, Rojo : Kieślowski en busca de la libertad y el amor. Madrid: Ediciones Internacionales Universitarias.ISBN84-8469-111-X.
Simonigh, Chiara (2000).La danza dei miseri destini: il Decalogo di Krzyzstof Kieślowski. Torino: Testo and immagine.ISBN88-86498-90-X.
Spadaro, Antonio (1999).Lo sguardo presente : una lettura teologica di "Breve film sull'amore" di K. Kieślowski. Rimini: Guaraldi.ISBN88-8049-166-0.
Termine, Laborio (2002).Immagine e rappresentazione. Torino: Testo and immagine.ISBN88-8382-081-9.
Wach, Margarete (2000).Krzysztof Kieślowski: kino der moralischen Unruhe. Köln: KIM; Marburg: Schuren.ISBN3-934311-06-7 (KIM)ISBN3-89472-360-2 (Schuren).
Wilson, Emma (2000).Memory and Survival: The French Cinema of Krzysztof Kieślowski. Oxford: Legenda.ISBN1-900755-27-0.
Wizner, Dariusz (2002).Stile cinematografico di Krzysztof Kieślowski. Roma: Universita Pontificia Salesiana. Thesis.
Wollermann, Tobias (2002).Zur musik in der Drei Farben: triologie von Krzysztof Kieślowski. Osnabrück: Epos Musik.ISBN3-923486-38-3.
Woodward, Steven, ed. (2009).After Kieślowski: The Legacy of Krzysztof Kieślowski. Detroit: Wayne State UP.ISBN978-0-8143-3326-6.
Zawiśliński, Stanislaw, ed. (1996).Kieślowski: album pod redakcja Stanislawa Zawiślińskiego; teksty [by] Krzysztof Kieślowski ...[et al.]. Warsaw: Skorpion.ISBN83-86466-11-1.
