Trieste Contemporanea settembre n.5 1998
 

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The most important things happened to me during my third year at the Lódz Film School. Until that moment everything was going smoothly without too many difficulties. I was very interested in the new French films, Godard most of all. Under his influence I wrote a script that I sent to a competition. I received an award even if the expectations of the Film School were not very high. I showed it during an examination and the commission told me that I had two possibilities: to get plucked or to leave the School. It was a great defeat. Bossak was the only one who defended me, Bohdziewicz just stared at me and Toeplitz attacked me. The film was a provocation from an artistic point of view and perhaps for this reason Toeplitz did not agree with me. He said that I had made it with just few notions and that in spite of my attending the Film School I had not learnt anything and that I would not learn anything even in the future.

It was like going against a wall: for the first time, very clearly, I realized that I would have to fight for my films.

I understood that I would have to defend my artistic and expressive freedom. I had the impression that I had to answer to the question: who I am. Youth is beautiful when we think we can reach any aim, but only later we realize it is not like that. I knew I could be a physicist or a phylosopher and that I could try to do whatever I wanted to.

Krzysztof Zanussi

I could stand up and go away, but in that precise moment I realized that I wanted to be a film-maker. Even if I was aware that the verdict would be unfair I decided to accept it.