Birthday of Krzysztof Kieslowski

On June 27, 1941 in Warsaw, the son of Krzysztof was born into the family of Roman and Barbara Kieslowski.

At the end of the State Film School in Lodz (which Roman Polanski and Andrzej Wajda also graduated in different years) in 1968, Krzysztof Kieslowski began directing documentaries, short films and television films.

The first full-length feature film - "Blizna (The Scar)" - Krzysztof Kieslowski made in 1976.

For 20 years - from 1976 to 1996, the year of the director’s death, Krzysztof Kieslowski made 10 full-length feature films. 5 of them entered the Golden Thousand including "Krótki film o zabijaniu (A Short Film About Killing)", Trilogy "Trois couleurs (Three Colors)", "Krótki film o milosci (A Short Film About Love)", "Amator (Camera Buff)", "La double vie de Véronique (The Double Life of Veronique)". Based on this indicator Krzysztof Kieslowski is included in the list of 100 greatest world film directors compiled by FilmGourmand.

The guru of American film criticism, Roger Ebert, dedicated a special article to the memory of Krzysztof Kieślowski, in which he noted:

"There were those who believed Kieslowski was the greatest living director. Certainly he ranked with such modern masters as Scorsese, Kubrick and Kurosawa... His final four feature films won Kieslowski acclaim and large audiences, although the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, to its shame, disqualified "Red" as a foreign film nominee last year because of uncertainty about whether it was "mostly French" or "mostly Swiss" (it was filmed in Geneva, with an international cast and crew). Surely Kieslowski's whole career mocked such distinctions. In amends, the director's branch of the academy nominated Kieslowski as best director for "Red," and he was nominated the same year for the film's screenplay...In 1989, when his "Decalogue" was first being seen in New York, Kieslowski was asked by Village Voice writer Samir Hachem to name the 10 words he would keep if all other words were taken from him. He said, "Love. Hate. Loneliness. Fear. Coincidence. Pain. Anxiety. God. Responsibility." Told that he had named only nine, he added, "Innocence." Those 10 qualities represented the building-blocks of his cinema."

Today, on the birthday of the great director I want to remind fans of his work footage from his best films included in the Golden Thousand.