[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

(COOLLIST) Director Kieslowski, ambassador of Polish cinema, dies

Several of you had the opportunity to enjoy a Kieslowski film with
me.  From the GTS trip to see _White_ to the weekend with Empress where
we saw _Blue_ and _Red_ to the Strick visit where several of you saw
_Red_ and didn't invite me!  (of course, I was in Austin, so its
understood).  This director did great, compassionate work.  I never
got into his earlier films, but I liked everything from _Veronique_
on.

This is forwarded from rifle, the Hal Hartley fan mailing list.  -- Ben

Forwarded message:
> To: rifle-list@blob.best.net
> From: Brian Gross <bgross@worldweb.net>
> Subject: Director Kieslowski, ambassador of Polish cinema, dies
> 
> Wednesday March 13 1:25 PM EST
> Director Kieslowski, ambassador of Polish cinema, dies
> 
> WARSAW (Reuter) - Award-winning director Krzysztof Kieslowski died of a
> heart attack Wednesday, prompting an outpouring of grief from the Polish
> film world over the loss of its brightest talent.
> 
> Kieslowski, who was 54 and had suffered a serious heart attack last year
> that prompted him to take a break from film-making, won international
> recognition with his Three Colors trilogy, ``Blue,'' ``White'' and ``Red,''
> about contemporary moral dilemmas.
> 
> ``Red'' brought him an Oscar nomination in 1995 but the award went to Robert
> Zemeckis for Forrest Gump.''
> 
> ``His films have entered the canon of world cinema,'' fellow Polish director
> Jerzy Skolimowski commented.
> 
> ``Recently he has been the ambassador of Polish cinema abroad,'' he added.
> 
> Kieslowski was especially popular in Europe where he won several top prizes.
> 
> ``Blue'' shared the Golden Lion at Venice in 1993 and its star, France's
> Juliette Binoche, won the best actress prize. ``White'' earned Kieslowski
> the best director prize the following year in Berlin.
> 
> ``Red,'' telling the story of a young model in a complex psychological
> relationship with an embittered retired judge, was among the favorites
> during the 1994 Cannes film festival but lost to Quentin Tarrantino's ``Pulp
> Fiction.''
> 
> Kieslowski, a critic of the purely commercial approach to film-making,
> managed to win acclaim both from critics and moviegoers.
> 
> But he stopped making films after Cannes, saying he wanted to rest after a
> 28-year presence in the business. His fans were hoping he would soon stand
> again behind the camera.
> 
> He started his career shooting documentaries and was later associated with
> the ``cinema of moral anxiety'' that grouped several Polish directors,
> including Andrzej Wajda, and aimed to depict the condition of Poles under
> communism.
> 
> He won wider recognition with his ``Decalogue,'' a series of losely
> connected movies whose subject revolved around the Ten Commandments.
> 
> The best of the series, ``Short Film about Killing,'' is a blood-curdling
> tale of a murderer sentenced to death and executed by hanging -- a movie
> interpreted by critics as a protest against the death penalty.
> _________________________________________________________________
> Brian J. Gross   **   bgross@worldweb.net   **   Washington, D.C.
-- 
Benjamin L. Combee (combee@techwood.org) <URL:http://www.yak.net/combee/>
that public-access-TV-making, video-game-collecting, cryptography-pushing,
World-Wide-Web-explaining, fem-music-loving, bad-pun-creating guy in Austin
####
To unsubscribe from (COOLLIST), reply to this and tell me to delete you.
To see the (COOLLIST) archives, go to http://www.yak.net/coollist/.