Jan Jakub Kolski

Last updated

Jan Jakub Kolski
Jan Jakub Kolski (2018).jpg
Jan Jakub Kolski, 2018
Born (1956-01-29) 29 January 1956 (age 66)
Wrocław, Poland
NationalityPolish
Occupationfilm director, writer

Jan Jakub Kolski (born 29 January 1956) is a Polish film director, cinematographer, and writer.

Contents

Early life and career

Kolski was born in Wrocław, and comes from a family closely connected to cinema. His father, Roman Kolski, and his sister, Ewa Pakulska were film editors. His brother, Włodzimierz Kolski, is a production manager. His paternal grandfather was a film producer. Kolski's wife, Grażyna Błęcka-Kolska is an actress. From age eleven until age fourteen, Kolski lived in a small village, Popielawy, near Tomaszów Mazowiecki and Łódź. Those years became the inspiration for his later films. During the late 1970s, he worked his way through the ranks at a TV station in his home town, ending up as chief director of photography. He then studied cinematography at the famous Film School in Łódź, where he now runs a screenplay workshop. In 2007 he gained his doctoral degree in film art. He's also a lecturer at Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing.

Works

During the 1980s, Kolski made about twenty short films, including Umieranko (A Little Dying); Najpiękniejsza jaskinia świata (The Most Beautiful Cave in the World); Mały dekalog (The Little Ten Commandments), Nie zasmucę serca twego (I Won't Make You Sad), Jak mnie kochasz (How Do You Love Me?), Szkoła przetrwania (The Survival School), Pałkiewicz ma rację (Palkiewicz Is Right), Słowiański świt (The Dawn of the Slavonic Tribes), Ładny dzień (A Nice Day), Idź (Walk). The shorts won many awards in Poland. Many of Kolski's short films documented his passion for mountain climbing and speleology, which earned him a nickname 'The Stuntman of the Polish cinematography'. More recently, Kolski created three film diaries: Zobaczyc jak najwiecej (To see everything), Gdzie jestes Paititi? (Where are you, Paititi?) and Między rajem a ziemią (Between Paradise and Earth) during his journeys to Asia and South America.

Kolski's first feature, Pogrzeb kartofla (The Burial of a Potato), was shot in Popielawy in 1990, and was based on a real story of Kolski's maternal grandfather, Jakub Szewczyk. In that movie, as well as in his subsequent films, Kolski employed his own vision of the world enriched with magic, and is considered to be the founder of the 'magical realism' trend in Polish film making. Since then, Kolski has made many more films, most of them located in the same village or mythical countryside. Among those films are: Pograbek (A Knacker); Magneto; Jańcio Wodnik (Johnnie Aquarius aka Johnnie Waterman); Cudowne miejsce (A Miraculous Place); Grający z talerza (Playing from the Plate); Szabla od komendanta (The Commander's Sword aka Legacy of Steel); and Historia kina w Popielawach (The History of Cinema in Popielawy), which were all based on Kolski's own script. In 1994 Jańcio Wodnik won the Findling Award at the Filmfestival Cottbus.

Daleko od okna (Keep Away from the Window), made in 2000, opened a new chapter in Kolski's filmography. The screenplay by Cezary Harasimowicz was based on a real-life story written by Hanna Krall, famous for writing about the Holocaust. His next work, Pornografia (Pornography) was in turn based on the novel with the same title by Witold Gombrowicz. The next two Jasminum and Afonia i pszczoły (Afonia and Honeybees) were based on his own original screenplays, whereas Wenecja (Venice), his latest movie, is based on a short story by Włodzimierz Odojewski.

Jan Jakub Kolski in 2010 Jan Jakub Kolski Goa 2010.jpg
Jan Jakub Kolski in 2010

Kolski continued to work with television, and many of his films and other works were made for the medium. He wrote several plays for television, including Bajka o bardzo lekkim chlebie (A Fable of the Very Light Bread), Skrzypki (The Fiddles), Noga dla Józefa (A Leg for Jozef), and Kamera marzen (The Dream Camera), which were primarily addressed to children. Others, such as Wyspa róż (The Rose Island) and Diabeł przewrotny (Again the Devil), were Kolski's adaptations of original plays. Kolski also directed several commercials, video clips, and one television series, Małopole, czyli świat (Malopole, or the World), in which he returns to the life in the countryside.

Kolski's literary output includes short stories collected in two books – Jańcio Wodnik i inne nowele (Johnnie Aquarius and Other Stories), and Mikroświaty (Microworlds); a novel, Kulka z chleba (A Bread Pellet); and a book for children, Jadzia i małoludki (Jadzia and The Little People).

Kolski has won many awards in Poland and abroad. Among his major international successes is the Special Award at The Film Festival in Tokyo in 1995 for his Grający z talerza (Playing from the Plate). In 2000, he also became a member of the European Film Academy. His 2000 film Keep Away from the Window was entered into the 23rd Moscow International Film Festival. [1]

Filmography

School works

Shorts

Features

Television theatre plays

Related Research Articles

<i>Il Postino: The Postman</i> 1994 film directed by Michael Radford

Il Postino: The Postman is a 1994 comedy-drama film co-written by and starring Massimo Troisi and directed by English filmmaker Michael Radford. Based on the 1985 novel Ardiente paciencia by Antonio Skármeta, itself adapted from a 1983 film written and directed by Skármeta, the film tells a fictional story in which the real life Chilean poet Pablo Neruda forms a friendship with a simple Procida postman (Troisi) who learns to love poetry. The cast includes Troisi, Philippe Noiret, and Maria Grazia Cucinotta. The screenplay was adapted by Radford, Troisi, Anna Pavignano, Furio Scarpelli, and Giacomo Scarpelli.

Bogusław Linda Polish actor and singer

Bogusław Linda is a Polish actor known from films such as Psy and Tato. He appeared in Andrzej Wajda's Man of Iron and Danton and in Krzysztof Kieślowski's Blind Chance and the seventh episode of Kieślowski's Dekalog. He is regarded as one of the most popular Polish film actors.

David Webb Peoples is an American screenwriter who wrote Blade Runner (1982), Unforgiven (1992), and 12 Monkeys (1995). He was nominated for Oscar, Golden Globe, and BAFTA awards. He won the best screenplay awards from the L.A. Film Critics (1991) and National Society of Film Critics (1992) for Unforgiven.

Bruce Joel Rubin is an American screenwriter, meditation teacher, and photographer. His films often explore themes of life and death with metaphysical and science fiction elements. Prominent among them are Jacob’s Ladder, My Life and Ghost, for which he received the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Ghost was also nominated for Best Picture, and was the highest-grossing film of 1990. He is sometimes credited as "Derek Saunders" or simply "Bruce Rubin".

Kevin Jarre

Kevin Noel Jarre was an American screenwriter, actor, and film producer. He adopted the last name of his adoptive father, Maurice Jarre.

Jan Hřebejk Czech theater and film director

Jan Hřebejk is a Czech film director and actor.

Oldřich Daněk was a Czech dramatist, writer, director and screenwriter.

Krzysztof Ptak was a Polish cinematographer.

Karl Tunberg was an American screenwriter and occasional film producer. His screenplays for Tall, Dark and Handsome (1941) and Ben-Hur (1959) were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay, respectively.

1994 Cannes Film Festival

The 47th Cannes Film Festival was held from 12 to 23 May 1994. The Palme d'Or went to the American film Pulp Fiction directed by Quentin Tarantino.

Franciszek Pieczka Polish actor (born 1928)

Franciszek Pieczka is a Polish actor. A graduate of the National Higher School of Theatre in Warsaw (1954), he first made his debut in the theatre in Jelenia Góra. He won the award for Best Actor at the Polish Film Festival in 1976 for The Scar.

Jeffrey Nachmanoff is an American screenwriter and director. He wrote the screenplay for the 2004 blockbuster film The Day After Tomorrow. He wrote and directed Traitor, which was released on August 27, 2008. His commercially most successful films have been The Day After Tomorrow, which grossed US$544 million, and The Tourist, which grossed US$278 million. He is the director of Replicas (2018).

<i>Johnnie Waterman</i> 1993 film

Johnnie Waterman is a 1994 Polish drama film directed by Jan Jakub Kolski. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. It won the Findling Award in Cottbus.

Jonathan Hales is a British playwright and screenwriter. He is noted for his work with Lucasfilm, including The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles television series and Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones.

Piotr Lenar is a Polish cinematographer, a member of the European Film Academy, Polish Society of Cinematographers (PSC) and the Berufsverband Kinematograph (BVK).

Piotr Bujnowicz is a Polish-born, Golden Trailer awarded producer, and photographer.

Artur Żurawski

Artur Żurawski is a Polish cinematographer, director and photographer who works in Poland and internationally.

<i>The Assignment</i> (2016 film) 2016 film

The Assignment is an action crime thriller film directed by Walter Hill and co-written by Hill and Denis Hamill. The film stars Michelle Rodriguez, Tony Shalhoub, Anthony LaPaglia, Caitlin Gerard and Sigourney Weaver.

The Peaks of Zelengora is a 1976 Yugoslav war drama directed by Zdravko Velimirović.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter is an upcoming American horror film directed by André Øvredal from a screenplay by Bragi F. Schut, Stefan Ruzowitsky, and Zak Olkewicz. It is an adaptation of "The Captain's Log", a chapter from the 1897 Bram Stoker novel Dracula. The film stars Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham, and David Dastmalchian.

References

  1. "23rd Moscow International Film Festival (2001)". MIFF. Archived from the original on 28 March 2013. Retrieved 29 March 2013.