Amator (1979)

Director:

Krzysztof Kieslowski

Writers:

Krzysztof Kieslowski (dialogue)
Jerzy Stuhr (dialogue)

Release Date:

14 February 1980 (Netherlands)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Filip buys an 8mm movie camera when his first child is born. Because it's the first camera in town,...

Plot Keywords:

Hospital | Milk | Train | Singing | Breast Feeding

Awards:

5 wins

Cast

Jerzy Stuhr	...	Filip Mosz
Malgorzata Zabkowska	...	Irka Mosz
Ewa Pokas	...	Anna Wlodarczyk
Stefan Czyzewski	...	Director
Jerzy Nowak	...	Stanislaw Osuch
Tadeusz Bradecki	...	Witek Jachowicz
Marek Litewka	...	Piotrek Krawczyk
Boguslaw Sobczuk	...	Kedzierski
Krzysztof Zanussi	...	Himself
Andrzej Jurga	...	Himself
Alicja Bienicewicz	...	Jaska
Tadeusz Rzepka	...	Wawrzyniec
Aleksandra Kisielewska	...	Hania, secretary
Wlodzimierz Maciudzinski	...	Stelmaszczyk
Roman Stankiewicz	...	Czeslaw

Also Known As:

Camera Buff

Runtime:

117 min

Country:

Poland

Language:

Polish

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Hong Kong:IIA | UK:12 (DVD rating) | UK:A (original rating) | Sweden:11 | Finland:K-12 | Hungary:14 | Argentina:13 | Australia:M

Filming Locations:

Kraków, Poland

Company:

Film Polski

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Lekcja polskiego kina (2002)

Soundtrack:

Walc e-moll

Kino moralnego niepokoju : An outstanding example of the cinema of the moral concern.

To an ordinary viewer "Amator" is a film about film-making.However I feel that this is only partially true as this film is much more than a film within a film.Amator is a wonderful film about the role cinema plays in human life along with basic emotions like joy, sorrow, suffering, humiliation, friendship, death etc. Much of the film's brilliance comes in the form of incredible acting performance by Jerzy Stuhr.He has given a masterful twist to his character named Filip Mosz. In "Amator",he knows fully well that he is suffering enormously due to the lack of creative freedom but despite this knowledge he resolutely decides to confront all his emotional crisis. There is no artistic freedom for him as his party officials do not allow him to make the films which he truly wants to make. His wife is against his film-making activities too. This takes toll on their domestic bliss too. In a broad perspective "Amator" talks of the difficulties most of the filmmakers Eastern Europe had to face when they were living under communist times.In " Amator", Kieslowski has shown how subtle films like this one can be made which are mildly critical of party. It would be of great interest to viewers conscious of the honest cinema movement called "cinema of the moral concern". For others it would be a good introduction to one of the outstanding films of East European cinema.