When Krzysztof Kieslowski announced his retirement from filmmaking after Three Colours: Red, his old friend and collaborator, Krzysztof Wierzbicki, was keen to pay tribute to an artistic career which seemed to be at an end. Hence this documentary profile. It's lent an almost unbearable pathos by its timing.

Only a few months after its premiere in December 1995, Kieslowski was dead, and this is ironically a kind of last testament.

In many ways, it's a family affair. Not only Wierzbicki, but the cinematographer, Jacek Petrycki, the sound editor, Michal Zarnecki, and several other members of the crew had worked with Kieslowski in years gone by.

As a documentary maker himself, Kieslowski was renowned for his fascination with people; the patient, sympathetic way in which he would elicit their opinions. Now, he was on the other side of the camera.

His old collaborators were using tricks he'd taught them to prise him out of his shell.

For his introduction, Wierzbicki devises an ingenious conceit. Without revealing Kieslowski's identity, he asks various experts (a psychoanalyst, a clairvoyant and a doctor among them) to assess the director's personality.

Everybody, Wierzbicki believed, knew about Kieslowski as an artist. He wanted to give them a sense of the man behind the films.

Geoffrey Macnab

Prod co: Kulturmode Film

Prod: Karen Hjort

Dir/Scr: Krzysztof Wierzbicki

Ph: Jacek Petrycki

Ed: Milenia Fiedler

Sound director: Michal Zarnecki

Music: Zbigniew Preisner

Running time: 56 mins

Screening: 23 June, 15.00, Praha

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