Polish filmmaker Kazimierz Kutz dies at 89

Kazimierz Kutz was born on 16 February 1929 in Szopienice, now a district of Katowice, in the southern region of Silesia. Soon after he graduated from the famed film school in Łódź, in 1959, he directed his first film. This was after he had already worked several years as an assistant to Andrzej Wajda, also as second director on the iconic "Canal".

An eminent representative of the so-called "Polish film school" in his pictures he spoke about his strong ties to Upper Silesia: among his best-known work was his Silesian triptych. The first in the series, the 1970 "Salt of the Black Earth", based on his own screenplay, is considered to be a classic of Polish cinema. In the 1990s he also directed a film about nine miners killed by communist riot police in December 1981 at the Wujek colliery in southern Poland several days after the imposition of martial law.
As he once said in an interview for Polish Radio, he believed that his profession forced him to testify to the place from where he came. He is credited with bringing an understanding of Silesia to the general public in Poland, and he continued to be a champion for the region also during his time in the Polish Parliament.

Kazimierz Kutz was also renowned for his theatrical productions and especially his televised dramas for public television's Teatr Telewizji.
Laureate of many film awards - among them the Golden Lions and Platinum Lions at the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia and the Polish Film Prize.

He was co-founder of the Association of Polish Filmmakers.

Between 2001 and 2005 he was the Deputy Speaker of the Senate, and an MP from 2007 to 2011.

In 2010 Kazimierz Kutz brought out his partly autobiographical novel, written - as he said - for over 40 years, because he had wanted to write a book that nobody had yet written about Upper Silesia.

He died on December 18 in Warsaw.

(pk/gs)

Source: IAR