„Everyone wants to change the world whenever they make the effort to do something. I don’t think I ever believed the world could be changed in the literal sense of the phrase. I thought the world could be described.”
(Krzysztof Kieślowski, from an interview with Stanisław Zawiśliński)
Each year, the projects participating in ScripTeast stand a chance of winning the Krzysztof Kieślowski ScripTeast Award for the Best Script From Eastern Europe. The aim of the Award is to highlight the achievements of each edition, and shine a spotlight on the most accomplished project of the edition – and its author. The winner is selected by the Artistic Board.
The Award Ceremony takes place during the International Film Festival in Cannes and bears the name of one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, who also happens to hail from our region, Krzysztof Kieślowski.
Krzysztof Kieślowski was born in Warsaw in 1941 and died there in 1996. He gained international recognition with A Short Film About Killing and A Short Film About Love (1988), two films in his DECALOGUE series. In 1991 with The Double Life Of Veronica, Kieślowski began making his films as Polish-French co-productions, and from 1993 all his films were collaborative efforts with the renowned French producer Marin Karmitz.
After completing the Three Colors trilogy (1993-94), Kieślowski announced that he was quitting filmmaking. During the last months of his life, he worked with Krzysztof Piesiewicz on screenplays for a trilogy consisting of works titled Paradise, Purgatory, and Hell. Two of those films have been produced so far: Heaven directed by Tom Tykwer and Hell directed by Danis Tanović. Purgatory remains unmade.
During his lifetime, Kieslowski won numerous awards for his work, among them: the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival for Three Colors: Blue and the Silver Bear at the International Film Festival in Berlin for Three Colors: White. He received the European Media Award (Girona) in 1996 and was a winner of the Felix Award of the European Film Academy.
In 1990 he became an honorary member of the British Film Institute for his „outstanding contributions to the culture of the moving image” and in 1993 he received the Order of Literature and Art of the Minister of Culture of France. In 1994 Kieślowski was awarded the Danish C.J. Soning Award for his contribution to the development of film art and European culture, and that same year he was nominated for an American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for writing and directing for Three Colors: Red.