Krzysztof Kieślowski: Encyclopedia II - Krzysztof Kieślowski - Early life

Krzysztof Kieślowski - Early life

Kieślowski was born in Warsaw and grew up in several small towns. 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 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, Kieślowski applied to the Łódź Film School, the famed Polish film school that also produced Roman Polański and Andrzej Wajda. 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 Łódź 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. Kieślowski quickly lost his interest in theatre and decided to make documentary films.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Early life", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki