 Krzysztof Kieslowski mini-bio: Kie?lowski was born in Warsaw and grew up in several small towns, moving wherever his engineer father, a tuberculosis patient, could find treatment. At sixteen, he briefly attended a firemen's training school, but dropped out after three months. Without any career goals, he then entered the College for Theatre Technicians in Warsaw in 1957 because it was run by a relative. He decided to become a theatre director, but at the time there was no specific training program for directors, so he chose to study film as an intermediate step.
Leaving college and working as a theatrical tailor, Kie?lowski applied to the ?ód? Film School, the famed Polish film school which also has Roman Pola?ski and Andrzej Wajda among its alumni. He was rejected twice. To avoid compulsory military service during this time, he briefly became an art student, and also went on a drastic diet in an attempt to make himself medically unfit for service. After several months of successfully avoiding the draft, he was accepted to the ?ód? Film School on his third attempt.
He attended from 1964 to 1968, during a period in which the government allowed a relatively high degree of artistic freedom at the school. Kie?lowski quickly lost his interest in theatre and decided to make documentary films. Kieslowski also married his lifelong love, Maria (Marysia) Cautillo, during his final year in school (m. January 21, 1967 to his death), and they had a daughter, Marta (b. January 8, 1972).
Kie?lowski died aged 54 on March 13, 1996, during open-heart surgery following a heart attack, and was interred in Pow?zki Cemetery in Warsaw. His grave is located within the prestigious plot 23 and has a sculpture of the thumb and forefingers of two hands forming an oblong space—the classic view as if through a movie camera. The small sculpture is in black marble on a pedestal slightly over a meter tall. The slab with Kie?lowski's name and dates lies below. He was survived by his wife Maria and daughter Marta.
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