Krzysztof Krauze, film director and scriptwriter, born in Warsaw in 1953.

fot. Photopass.pl

Krauze graduated from the faculty of cinematography of the Łódź film school, but the job of a film director was always on his mind. In 1978-83 he worked for the Studio of Little Film Forms SE-MA-FOR in Łódź. In early 1980s he decided to emigrate, but failing to make a presence in his profession, returned to Poland. In 1983-5 he worked for the Karol Irzykowski Studio, and then, until 1995, for TOR Productions. In the early 1990s Krauze made commercial spots and for a while sat on the Programme Board of the Andrzej Munk TV Studio of Debut and on the Artistic Board of the Karol Irzykowski Studio. He has been a member of the European Film Academy since 2001.

Krauze is a winner of numerous awards, including the Passport of the weekly Polityka in 2002, Polish Eagle Film Award for best directing and screenplay, Warsaw Mermaid Critics Club Award and Golden Tape Polish Filmmakers' Association Award in 2002. His films won prizes at film festivals, including the Grand Prix at the Gdynia Polish Film Festival for "Debt". In 1997 he was named the Man of the Year by "Życie", the national daily.

Made in 1999, "Debt" remains Krauze's best-known film. When completing a questionnaire of the Polityka weekly, the film critic Lech Kurpiowski said it was "a thriller and a morality play in one" in addition to being a "record of the anxieties of today's Poles". "Debt", a raw, realistic and shocking picture that won over the audience, has made Krauze one of the most appreciated directors of the middle-aged generation. Prior to that, Krauze made documentary and short films and, when working for the SE-MA-FOR Studio, had made films using various techniques of animation.

Having returned from the two-year emigration, Krauze made "Jest", a work he considers uniquely important in his output. This one-hour-long documentary was produced in the Irzykowski Studio, a production facility enjoying a certain independence in the communist Poland. It shows a pilgrimage going from the village of Zbrosza Duża near Grójec to meet the Pope in Czestochowa in 1983. The pilgrims recollect the events that took place in their village in the 1960s, when militia and special security forces desecrated the Holy Sacrament. The filming was not easy, but after some difficult talks with the authorities, Krauze managed to finish the film. Because the story of the people from Zbrosza Duża ended with the year 1972 and so did not show the establishment of the local Rural Solidarity in 1976, it made its way to the cinemas, albeit after a five-year waiting period.

"Jest" received an award of the underground "Solidarity" in 1984 as well as an award of the Parisian "Kultura". In an interview with Barbara Hollender ("Rzeczpospolita" of 25 Nov. 1999), Krauze recollects that this documentary became his ticket to the reputable TOR Productions managed by Krzysztof Kieślowski and Krzysztof Zanussi. It was in TOR that Krauze's full-length feature debut "New York, 4 a.m." was completed in 1988. This comedy, brimming with cheerfulness, was often said to be Czech in style. Krauze himself admits to such a kinship, saying that his film is

"close to a Czech comedy in the way it thinks about people, but not in the convention it uses. This way of thinking has literary roots in Capek, Hasek, Vancura, Hrabal. Their warmth, cheerfulness and compassion carries the strength we need today".

In the same interview, given to Ewa Czeszejko-Sochacka, "Kino" no. 3/1989, Krauze confesses:

"I do not know if I want to talk about the dark side of the human nature to learn that there is emptiness behind it. I prefer to deal with what I consider worth rescuing".

"New York, 4 a.m." was noticed by the critics and well received by the audience. The professional community, however, was critical of it, says Krauze in the interview with Barbara Hollender. He took the criticism to his heart, concluding that the direction in which his first feature film went was ill-chosen.

" 'New York ...' was seen by quite many people, I got the award for debut in Gdynia, but to me it was a disaster. The people whose opinion I cared about were very aloof. I asked Krzysiek Kieślowski why he had let me make this film. He answered he did not want to stop it for fear that something would break in me. It broke, anyway. I did not stand behind a camera for the following eight years. I believe, though, that there is a purpose to everything that happens in life. I began to understand why I had made "Jest". There was a touch of truth in it. And that's the only way. You need to dig down to the truth. Even the most contrived film needs to carry the truth", says Krauze, articulating his artistic creed.

This highly self-demanding director considered his success a failure and did not return to making documentaries and features until 1992 and 1996, respectively. No doubt he was too hard on himself. In fact, "New York" has lost none of its graceful Hrabal-like humour and warmth, and its protagonists, living in a somewhat fairy-tale world in which dreams come true, have remained funny and likeable. Despite the convention used, "New York" told a certain truth about the Polish realities of the 1980s, when the system transformation were yet to start. It reflected the condition of the spirit of the society of those years, the stagnation in a world deprived of hope, in which dreams matter so much.

Krauze, however, renounced such poetics in his subsequent feature films, focusing clearly on the documentary-derived "digging down to the truth". He would make documentaries, too, notably "Department IV", about the harassment of the catholic church by the secret services of the communist regime, a topic he previously addressed in "Jest". His two other works, "Counterintelligence" and "Fell Down, Died, Drowned" deal with issues he would later take up in "Street Games": the notorious assassination of a Krakow student and oppositionist Stanisław Pyjas by Poland's secret services in the 1970s, made to look like an accident. The film shows two young journalists investigating the case of Pyjas's death in the 1990s.

"Given the 'martyrological' topic of the film, I tried to 'rejuvenate' it. It would have had a bigger impact had it been told more simply", says Krauze to Barbara Hollender in an interview taken after the unprecedented success of his later "Debt".

He refers to the formal techniques he has applied in "Street Games" with the intention of pleasing the tastes of young viewers. He has made creative use of his technical expertise originating not only from documentaries but also from animated films and commercials which he had made in the early 1990s. The "Street Games" images using animation and the language of advertising serve to comment on the protagonist's thoughts. Critics, however, saw in them an ill-matched postmodernist stylistics. So did, with hindsight, Krauze himself.

Krzysztof Ociepa thus compares "Street Games" with the later "Debt":

"What made Street Games stand out among pictures dealing with the settling of accounts with the past, made the film unpopular with the viewers. Krzysztof Krauze has learnt a lesson from that failure. His subsequent film, 'Debt' (1999), while in many ways similar to 'Street Games', is nevertheless different from them, for the director has moved away from the poetics of intertextual collage to a straightforward reconstruction of events"("Opcje" no. 6/2000)

Today it is difficult to judge objectively whether the authenticity of "Street Games" is lost due to excessive complexity, not to say formality, of the language applied by the director, or to non-artistic reasons. A rare thing happened to Krauze: the authentic and unexplained case around which he built the fictitious plot has become to a large extent explained. The black character, the police agent nicknamed Ketman and active in the Krakow opposition circles in the 1970s and 1980s, is now known by name, his operations not only revealed but, in an act of contrition, also publicly admitted to. Given the published confessions of the real agent, the cinematic speculations in the spirit of political fiction simply lose their reason for being. A private investigation into the case of Stanisław Pyjas and the long-term secret services agent had been conducted for years and successfully concluded by a journalist driven not by professional ambition (as were the young protagonists of Krauze's film), but by the fact that he was Pyjas's peer and friend.

Like "Street Games", "Debt" too deals with authentic events. Its plot, however, is set in one time perspective, that of the 1990s. "Debt" is an analysis of negative, strikingly amoral behaviours which emerge in contemporary times in the context of demise of the earlier values.

The film recounts a true crime, covered in the press, whose perpetrators have been punished with high sentences. As the film's director and co-screenwriter, Krauze took care to ensure authenticity when presenting the events, the psychological portraits of the protagonists and the social background. The events are told meticulously, Krauze having used the accounts of the condemned. The paradocumentary austerity of form and simplicity of formal techniques, such as cold colours of the shots, come straight from the gravity of the subject-matter.

"The close match between the reality shown in the film and our image of the reality outside the screen is to me one of the keys to the film's success", wrote Krzysztof Ociepa.

Krauze has shown himself a careful observer of contemporary Poland, and in particular of its young generation, intoxicated with the possibilities which seem open owing to the transformation of the system. For the two young people from "Debt" money is the only impulse to act.

"After all, it is them who are the beneficiaries of contemporary times. People like them seem to think that the new system has been created specifically for them. They have no complexes, do not look back to the past where the generation of their parents has remained with their knowledge by heart of the whole sections of 'Pan Tadeusz' and their ignorance of the difference between a share and a bond", wrote Zdzisław Pietrasik, referring both to the protagonists of "Debt" and to their prototypes, young men who will spend many years in prison, and the whole generation of young people who are similar to them and who have light-heartedly rejected the values cherished by their fathers". ("Polityka" no. 47/1999)

Krauze's protagonists, driven by the desire to be financially successful, have no qualms about doing business with a gangster. This rash decision of their gets them into trouble they did not foresee. The man who was supposed to help them to finance the profitable deal, soon turns into a ruthless executor of the fictitious debt and threatens them with death. The businessmen decide to murder their persecutor - and become like him.

"Debt" has spurred an avalanche of articles and press and Internet discussions. Arguably the most important film of the recent years, it has become a starting point for a broader debate on the Polish realities following the 1989 transformations. The director won accolades, but equally was accused of whitewashing the criminals and looking for spurious justifications of their behaviour.

"Debt" has many layers. You can read it as a suspense-filled thriller about two decent boys who got into trouble. Such is the interpretation offered by Barbara Hollender:

"The protagonists of 'Debt' went beyond the limits of necessary defence. The viewers, however, are convinced that, alone with their nightmare, they faced the kill-or-be killed alternative. This is the most horrible thing about Krauze's film. So is the realization that nightmares affect ordinary people, those similar to our neighbours, to passersby in the street, to ourselves" ("Rzeczpospolita" 19 Nov.1999)

Krauze's appeal to the viewer of "Debt" is not, however, a simple warning seen by Hollender. Tadeusz Lubelski is more to the point when writing:

"Through its suspense-building construction, 'Debt' makes us first feel solidarity with the protagonist - for whom we are as concerned as we would be for ourselves - and then makes us step back and ask whether we would really be able to go that far" ("Kino" no. 9/2002)

Krauze himself gives the following answer to the question about the root of evil:

"We want to be free in order to become again hostages of our own desires. The thing about desires is that they cannot be satisfied... Fear is born when our plans and desires are under threat. Today's media, with their promotion of the consumer life-style and of happiness as a result of owning, play a major part in multiplying our desires and, consequently, in violence." ("Tygodnik Powszechny" no 11/2002)

The evil in "Debt" is not embodied by a gangster. It is built into the desires of two young protagonists. Their desires drive their action and make them blind to non-material values. The image of reality offered by the film must be the result of a penetration of the darkest corners of human soul and is more akin to Dostoyevsky than to Hrabal. The world presented in "Debt" is the opposite of what is was in Krauze's debut "New York", where he chose to leave out the darker areas.

After "Debt" 's success, Krauze stated clearly:

"Now I know that I need films like Debt, not like 'New York, 4 a.m.' " (talking to Barbara Hollender, "Rzeczpospolita" 25 Nov. 1999)

However, Krauze has since modified his view, confessing in an Internet chat: "After 'Debt' I want to go to the light side of the street" (www.interia.pl 29 Sept.2000), meaning a series of his TV films "Big Things". The three TV shorts he made in 1999 and 2000 seem to grow both out of "Debt" and "New York". While not shunning caricature in drafting human characters, they combine humour and that special warmth familiar from "New York" with an apt observation of the realities and an underlying diagnosis. They reiterate the conviction that we are becoming hostages of our desires, although in a lighter manner than was done in "Debt". Of the three shorts, it is particularly in "Game" that Krauze skillfully combines criticism of the escalation of desires which turn a man into a hostage with an ability to see the brighter side of human nature.

While "Big Things" carry no such weight as "Debt", one cannot help appreciating the skill with which Krauze smuggles bitter truths in such light films.

Krauze's new film "My Nikifor", about the renowned Polish naive painter from the town of Krynica, has been keenly awaited. There is a lot of curiosity about the acting of Krystyna Feldman in the role of Nikifor. Media coverage of the shooting shows that masterly makeup has made the actress look extraordinarily similar to the painter ["for more information, see..."].

Filmography

Film etudes - director:

• 1976 "Pierwsze kroki (first Steps) " director, photography

Documentaries and shorts - director:

• 1977 "Symetrie (Symmetries)" also author of the screenplay, photography and sets - a combined film
• 1978 "Elementarz (First Reader)" - a combined film
• 1979 "Deklinacja (Declension)" - also author of the screenplay - a combined film
  (Awards: 1979 - International Short Film Festival, Krakow, FIPRESCI award)
• 1979 "Dwa listy (Two Letters)" also author of the screenplay - a combined film
  (Awards: 1979 - Confrontations of Young Filmmakers and Viewers, Białystok; PSFF Krakow, Brazowy Lajkonik; ISFF Krakow, FIPRESCI award)
• 1981 "Dzień kobiet (Women's Day)" also author of the screenplay - short feature
• 1981 "Praktyczne wskazówki dla zbieraczy motyli (Practical Guidelines for Butterfly Collectors)" also author of the screenplay - short feature
  (Awards: 1981 - Confrontations of Young Filmmakers and Viewers, Białystok, Journalists's Award)
• 1984 "Jest", also author of the screenplay (with Leszek Wosiewicz) - documentary
  (Awards: 1984 - Young Polish Cinema, Gdańsk, 2nd prize in the short film category; Paris, "Kultura" award; nagroda "Kultury", "Solidarity" Cultural Award)
• 1984 "Robactwo (Vermin)" - documentary
  (Awards: 1986 - "Young Polish Cinema", Gdańsk, 3rd prize in the short film category)
• 1993 "Nauka na całe życie (Learning for Life)" also author of the screenplay - documentary
• 1994 "Kontrwywiad (Counterintelligence)" also author of the screenplay (with Jerzy Morawski) - documentary
• 1994 "Nauka trzech narodów (Teaching of Three Nations)" also author of the screenplay - documentary
• 1994 "Ogrody Tadeusza Reichsteina (Tadeusza Reichstein's Gardens)" also author of the screenplay - documentary
• 1994 "Spadł, umarł, utonął (Fell, Died, Drowned)" - also author of the screenplay (with Jerzy Morawski) - documentary
• 1996 "Departament IV (Department IV)" also author of the screenplay - documentary
• 1997 "Stan zapalny (Inflammatory Condition)" also author of the screenplay (with Jerzy Morawski) - documentary

Feature films - director:

• 1988 "Nowy Jork - Czwarta rano (New York, 4 a.m.)" also author of the screenplay (with Andrzej Rozesłaniec and Jan Tomczak)
  
  Life in a provincial town moves around the local prison and the nearby bar, frequented both the chief of the prison, prisoners on a pass, and their relatives. A collection of characters appears: a prisoner on a pass, pretending to plan an attack on the truck said to transport money; a pretty buffet attendant dreaming of love and of going to America; a friend of hers, looking for a great career opportunity; a cook who proves a talented drummer; a good-natured chief of prison; a young woman with a baby, intent on forcing her boyfriend, doing time, to marry her; a travelling salesman; and a miracle collector. They all have some dreams, which, though unattainable, may suddenly come through.
  (Awards: 1988 - Jerzy Owsiak's Award of Friends of Chinese Towels; Young Polish Cinema, Gdansk, 3rd prize in the feature film category; PFFF Gdynia, best directing debut award).
  
  
• 1996 "Gry uliczne (Street Games)" also author of screenplay (with Jerzy Morawski)
  
  In 1990s two young journalists investigate the assassination of an oppositionist student, perpetrated years ago by the special services, trying to expose a police agent who helped in the crime. The case from the past is related to a contemporary explosive materials trade affair.
  (Awards: 1996 - PFFF Gdynia, Special Jury Award; Machiner "Machina" Magazine Award for the best Polish film; 1997 - Tarnow Film Award, Tarnów, Maszkaron Viewers' Award and Leliwita Bronze Statue - Main Prize)
  
  
• 1999 "Dług (Debt)" also author of the screenplay (with Jerzy Morawski)
  
  A tragic story of two young, enterprising businessmen who want to be financially successful. Searching for capital to invest, they get into a gangster trap. Unable to see a way out and failing to find support from the police, they commit brutal murder and then admit to guilt.
  (Awards: 1999 - PFFF Gdynia, Golden Lions Grand Prix for the best film and Journalists' Award; The Warsaw Mermaid - Polish Journalists' Association Film Critic Club for the best feature film; New Polish Cinema Festival in Wroclaw, Grand Prix; 2000 - Cultural Award of "Polityka" weekly in the film category - "Polityka's Passport" for 1999; Machiner "Machine" Magazine Award for a Mass Audiencje Film for 1999; Golden Tape of the Writers Club of the Polish Journalists' Association for the best Polish 1999 film (ex aequo with Andrzeja Wajda's "Pan Tadeusz"; National Cinema Art Festival "Prowincjonalia" in Września, the Jańcio Wodnik Grand Prix; Polish Eagle Film Award for the best 1999 director and the best screenplay; Tarnow Film Award, Young Jury Award, Viewers' Award and the Silver Leliwita Statue Special Award; Lubuskie Film Summer Festival in Łagów - the Juliusz Burski Award; 2001 - IFF Filadelfia, award for directing).
  
  
• 2000 "Wielkie rzeczy (Big Things)" also author of the screenplay (with Jarosław Sokół, based on Sokół's short stories) - a TV series made up of three one-hour films "System", "Gra (Game)" and "Sieć (Net)".
  While emotions are the main topic, it is objects that play a major role in the development of the plot. A different object in each film - a TV set, a car and a mobile phone - they all are important in contemporary times and affect the lives of ordinary people.
  "Game" received the Polish Journalists' Association Award at the 2000 PFFF in Gdynia.

Krzysztof Krauze is also the author of photography in the Leszek Baron's 1975 film etude "Królowa lalek (Queen of Dolls)" and the author of the screenplay of the Roman Huszczo's 1981 cartoon "Obliczenie (Calculation)". Certain photographs by Krauze have been used by Dariusz Jabóloński in his 1998 film "Fotoamator (Amateur Cameraman)".

Krauze has appeared in the following films: Józef Gębski and Antoni Halor's "Opis Obyczajów (Description of Habits)" from 1972; Krzysztof Rogulski's "Siedemset siedemdziesiąt siedem (Seven Hundred and Seventy-Seven)" from 1972; and Jacek Borchuch's "Kallafiorr" from 1999, where he was also the co-author of the screenplay.

Author: Ewa Nawój, August 2004.

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