Factory worker Filip buys an 8mm movie camera on the occasion of his child’s birth. As it’s the first camera in his town, Filip is named the official photographer by the local Communist Party boss. Soon, amateur film becomes an obsession of his, transforming his modest and formerly contented life.
Amator was Kieślowski’s breakthrough film and is a fascinating manifesto on the power of filmmaking to become a blinding obsession.
Classics O’Clock VI, Saturday April 5, 19:00 CET
CAMERA BUFF
AMATOR
Krzysztof Kieslowski
Poland
Comedy - Drama
1979
108’
Jerzy Stuhr, Malgorzata Zabrowska, Ewa Pokas, Stefan Czyzewski
Most people make films only to win prizes.
Polish Film Festival Golden Lion Award, the FIPRESCI Prize and Golden Prize at the 11th Moscow International Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival Otto Dibelius Film Award in 1980.
Α major film director and scriptwriter, he was born οn 27 June 1941 in Warsaw. After graduating from the State Film School in Lodz (1968), he worked as a lecturer at film schools in Katowice (Poland), Berlin, Helsinki, and Switzerland. He was a leading director of documentaries, television and feature films from the 1970s to the 1990s. The social and moral themes of contemporary times became the focus of his many significant films and his unique humanist treatment of those themes secured his place as one of the greatest modern film directors. He was a prominent member of the Polish film generation that defined the so-called “Cinema of Moral Anxiety” – films which tested the limits of socialist film censorship by drawing sharp contrasts between the individual and the state. Although Krzysztof Kieslowski is mostly known for feature films like the Decalogue, The Double Life of Veronique and the Three Colors trilogy, he has created lesser known, but equally unique documentaries, which, staying true to the philosophy of the rest of his work, reveal the gamut of his anxieties and sensibilities. He died on March 13, 1996 at the age of 55.
