#Malgorzata Zabkowska

[davidhudson]

Happy 76th, Jerzy Stuhr.

With Malgorzata Zabkowska in Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Camera Buff (1979).

[letterboxd-loggd]

Camera Buff (Amator) (1979) Krzysztof Kieślowski

June 19th 2023

[byneddiedingo]

Malgorzata Zabkowska and Jerzy Stuhr in Camera Buff (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1979) Cast: Jerzy Stuhr, Malgorzata Zabkowska, Ewa Pokas, Stefan Czyzewski, Jerzy Nowak, Tadeusz Bradecki, Marek Litewka, Tadeusz Rzepka. Screenplay: Krzysztof Kieslowski, Jerzy Stuhr. Cinematography: Jacek Petrycki. Music: Krzysztof Knittel. Film, said Jean-Luc Godard, is "truth 24 times a second." But as Oscar Wilde put it, "The truth is rarely pure and never simple," which is the problem amateur filmmaker Filip Mosz (Jerzy Stuhr) runs into when he begins to devote his life to making movies. Filip, a purchasing agent for a state-run factory in the Polish town of Wielice, buys a Russian-made 8mm camera when his first child is born. His wife, Irka (Malgorzata Zabkowska), is not entirely thrilled by the purchase, which cost him two months' salary, and she grows even more disenchanted when he devotes more and more time to his new hobby. Filming his new daughter takes up less of his time after the director of the factory (Stefan Czyzewski) says he will buy film for Filip if he will make a documentary about an anniversary celebration of the factory's founding, at which numerous Communist Party higher-ups will be present. Filip throws himself whole-heartedly into the project, going to movies more often and reading film books to pick up tips about filmmaking technique. When the director sees the film he makes some suggestions for cuts: Don't show the bigwigs slipping out of the meeting to go to the bathroom, for example, and what's with all the insert shots of pigeons? And then Anna, a pretty representative of the state film commission, shows up to suggest that Filip enter his movie in a festival celebrating industrial filmmaking. This only adds fuel to Irka's jealousy of Filip's avocation. Filip takes third prize at the festival -- after a judge proclaims that none of the films entered deserved a first prize -- and attracts the notice of a TV station in Krakow, which is interested in news footage from Wielice. As Filip's filmmaking career snowballs, however, so do his troubles: The neglected Irka leaves him, and the director informs him that the footage he has sent to the TV station, revealing that renovation funds for the town have been misused, has caused some projects, like a nursery school, to be canceled, and that he has had to fire some of Filip's fellow workers. Camera Buff is clearly a fable about the compulsiveness that drives and sometimes destroys artists, as well as a rather oblique satire on the dreariness of Polish life under communist rule. At the end of the film, Filip is reduced to filming perhaps the only thing he can be sure of: himself.

[myfilmsbox]

Camera Buff (1979) dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski

[moviemosaics]

Camera Buff

directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1979

[artfilmfan]

Camera Buff  (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1979)

“What are you filming? Anything that moves.”

[howardhawkshollywoodannex]

Jerzy Stuhr and Malgorzata Zabkowska are proud parents of their first child in Camera Buff (1979).  This was Malgorzata’s first of nine film credits to 2009.

[cadwalladery]

Films seen in 2019

# 147 - Camera Buff (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1979)

[katharinehepbrun]

Camera Buff (1979) dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski

[cadwalladery]

Camera Buff (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1979)