Piotr Kamler – master of animation, three times awarded in Krakow, winner of the Grand Prix at the Annecy Festival in 1975 – will be awarded at the 51st KFF with Dragon of Dragons Award.
The Dragon of Dragons Award has been given by the organizers of Krakow Film Festival to outstanding documentary and animation filmmakers since 1998. Among previous winners there are such well-known artists as Kazimierz Karabasz, Allan King, Albert Maysles, Werner Herzog, Stephen and Timothy Quay, Raoul Servais, Jerzy Kucia and Jonas Mekas.
Piotr Kamler was born in 1936. He graduated from the graphics department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He debuted in 1959 with an amateur animated film "Miasto" (The City). In the same year he won a scholarship in Paris, where he met Pierre Scheffer, a famous composer of concrete music and an experimental artist at studio Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrete (GRMC). Scheffer was so interested in visions of the Polish artist, that he has created favorable conditions for Kamler’s work in the GMRC, which henceforth became co-producer of his films.
Kamler’s animations can be divided into two types – abstract and narrative. Kamler’s films have many elements of science fiction, but irony applies – film critic Marcin Giżycki writes. – They are full of strange devices, weightless, flying disks, futuristic landscapes, unearthly civilization. But also magic and alchemy, the transmutation of matter, magic sticks. Even the very geometric forms, as in "Le pas" (Walk) or "Une mission éphémère" (One Ephemeral Mission), move in a magic or a telekinetic manner. Despite all the uniqueness of Kamler’s vision, the spirit of Georges Méliès lives in his movies.
In 1982, after five years of work, the artist completed his only feature film. Kamler’s biggest project and the most amazing sci-fi film in the history of cinema – "Chronopolis". The history of the encounter of two civilizations at different stages of development was completed with such a precision that the author was repeatedly asked about the use of the computer, however he consistently denies.
Piotr Kamler is the author of a dozen films, almost all produced in France. He, however, considers himself as Polish filmmaker. For his work the artist has won numerous awards including the prize for the best animated film of the last 30th years at Annecy International Animated Film Festival for "Le pas" (1975). He received the Silver Dragon, main prize for animated films in Krakow three times – for "La planete vert" (1966), "Le trou" (1968) and " Coeur de secours" (1973).
The Dragon of Dragons Awards ceremony will be held on 24th May 2011 in Kijow.Centrum cinema. During the Festival a retrospective of films by Kamler and an exhibition of his work and meetings with the audience are planned.
1959 – "Miasto”