[go: up one dir, main page]

    Release calendarTop 250 moviesMost popular moviesBrowse movies by genreTop box officeShowtimes & ticketsMovie newsIndia movie spotlight
    What's on TV & streamingTop 250 TV showsMost popular TV showsBrowse TV shows by genreTV news
    What to watchLatest trailersIMDb OriginalsIMDb PicksIMDb SpotlightFamily entertainment guideIMDb Podcasts
    OscarsEmmysToronto Int'l Film FestivalIMDb Stars to WatchSTARmeter AwardsAwards CentralFestival CentralAll events
    Born todayMost popular celebsCelebrity news
    Help centerContributor zonePolls
For industry professionals
  • Language
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
Watchlist
Sign in
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
Use app
  • Cast & crew
  • User reviews
  • Trivia
  • FAQ
IMDbPro

L'amateur

Original title: Amator
  • 1979
  • Tous publics
  • 1h 52m
IMDb RATING
7.8/10
8.9K
YOUR RATING
L'amateur (1979)
An ordinary factory worker buys a camera on the occasion of the birth of his child. The authorities order him to make documentaries about the factory's success. But his endeavor to be truthful leads him to opposition against censorship.
Play trailer2:31
1 Video
99+ Photos
ParodyPolitical DramaSatireWorkplace DramaComedyDramaRomance

An ordinary factory worker buys a camera on the occasion of the birth of his child. The authorities order him to make documentaries about the factory's success. But his endeavor to be truthf... Read allAn ordinary factory worker buys a camera on the occasion of the birth of his child. The authorities order him to make documentaries about the factory's success. But his endeavor to be truthful leads him to opposition against censorship.An ordinary factory worker buys a camera on the occasion of the birth of his child. The authorities order him to make documentaries about the factory's success. But his endeavor to be truthful leads him to opposition against censorship.

  • Director
    • Krzysztof Kieslowski
  • Writers
    • Krzysztof Kieslowski
    • Jerzy Stuhr
  • Stars
    • Jerzy Stuhr
    • Malgorzata Zabkowska
    • Ewa Pokas
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    7.8/10
    8.9K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Krzysztof Kieslowski
    • Writers
      • Krzysztof Kieslowski
      • Jerzy Stuhr
    • Stars
      • Jerzy Stuhr
      • Malgorzata Zabkowska
      • Ewa Pokas
    • 30User reviews
    • 26Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 6 wins total

    Videos1

    Trailer
    Trailer 2:31
    Trailer

    Photos140

    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    + 133
    View Poster

    Top cast27

    Edit
    Jerzy Stuhr
    Jerzy Stuhr
    • Filip Mosz
    Malgorzata Zabkowska
    Malgorzata Zabkowska
    • Irka Mosz
    Ewa Pokas
    Ewa Pokas
    • Anna Wlodarczyk
    Stefan Czyzewski
    Stefan Czyzewski
    • Director
    Jerzy Nowak
    Jerzy Nowak
    • Stanislaw Osuch
    Tadeusz Bradecki
    Tadeusz Bradecki
    • Witek Jachowicz
    Marek Litewka
    Marek Litewka
    • Piotrek Krawczyk
    Boguslaw Sobczuk
    Boguslaw Sobczuk
    • Kedzierski
    Krzysztof Zanussi
    Krzysztof Zanussi
    • Krzysztof Zanussi
    Andrzej Jurga
    Andrzej Jurga
    • Andrzej Jurga
    Alicja Bienicewicz
    • Jaska
    Tadeusz Rzepka
    Tadeusz Rzepka
    • Wawrzyniec
    Aleksandra Kisielewska
    • Hania, secretary
    Wlodzimierz Maciudzinski
    • Stelmaszczyk
    Roman Stankiewicz
    • Czeslaw
    Antonina Barczewska
    • Katarzyna
    Feliks Szajnert
    • Doctor
    Jolanta Brzezinska
    Jolanta Brzezinska
    • Wawrzyniec's Wife
    • Director
      • Krzysztof Kieslowski
    • Writers
      • Krzysztof Kieslowski
      • Jerzy Stuhr
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews30

    7.88.8K
    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    6
    7
    8
    9
    10

    Featured reviews

    10jkhuysmans0

    What Are You Shooting? …Everything That Moves

    Ah for the love of film…In 2006, I was one internet flight ticket transaction click away from moving to the area of Poland for the duration, but didn't. The "good" reason being is that I suffered some seriously grave trepidation over the fact that I would need to have two months salary in the bank before I'd EVER raise enough capital to buy an 8 mm motion picture camera. And this was in 2006. Sadly, these hypertensive concerns about finances low, all sleepless nights over equipment I don't have, and from where in the heck is the next camera going to come turned out to be relative in the scope of things –in a sick and cyclical sense- and after interfacing with the characters of Kyrstof Kieslowski's incredibly moving Humanist Dark-Dramity, Camera Buff, for an hour and half, I'm just now harboring more than a few serious regrets about not actually abandoning the competitive, spiraling nightmare that is Western Life when I had the chance.

    Camera Buff is a wonderful story about a factory worker Filip (Jerzy Stuhr); a man who, in his thirties, begins to see life anew through the view finder of a small gauge movie camera. Originally purchased for "two months salary," which "pissed his wife off" to document his newborn daughter's first few steps, the 8 mm camera is quickly realized as something more useful than just a device for making home-movies. The narrative's tension is organized specifically around the reaction to the films of the institutional power structures and forces around Filip that essentially commissioned, financed, and instigated the films themselves along with Filip's newly discovered and unyielding passion for creating them as he sees fit.

    If you view the Kino Video DVD release of this film, perhaps even more profoundly affecting than the feature as an augury of hope for the human race is the sixteen minute black and white documentary entitled Talking Heads in which Kielowski conducts helter-skleter a multitude of fifteen second interviews about "who you are" and "what you want" with Polish citizens, age zero to one-hundred, across all walks of life starting at the year 1979 with a little gurgling baby. In all, it's wonderful material and has me seeking out more Kieslowski.
    8ellkew

    Captivating story

    I found this film enthralling and revealing about a man gradually discovering his purpose in life and the effect it has on those around him as well as the obstacles he now has to face. He must now face the political as he takes a stance on social issues in his life and his town. His naiveté is warming and it demonstrates what a great actor Stuhr is that the film chips away at this slowly as he awakens to the new realities of his life. From a man who had everything at the beginning he has now shattered his domestic life but gained something some would say far richer and more permanent for his soul, a purpose. One that helps him to 'understand what this shitty life is about'. The final shot brings the film full circle as we see a man in the grip of his obsession.
    tedg

    A Model of the Man as a Young Artist

    A Model of the Man as a Young Artist

    One of the best things in the world is to take someone you love deeply and trace them back in their histories, back back before you knew them. Back until you see all the butterflies that nudged each other to produce what you need and feed.

    And before the shape was mature. Yes, then you can see the structure, the limbs before they flowered and even surprise yourself a bit.

    I'm in love with Kieslowski. Oh he isn't my favorite filmmaker, and not the one I spend time with when I need to learn and grow. But he is someone to have tea with, a friend who has his own way of fluffing air with apparent lovely slight fogs but when you encounter them you find them informed, nourishing, psychotropic. More than lovely. "Heaven," though not all his, is something I wish on every soul and every vehicle he had driven until then carried him there.

    This is Kielsowski's first feature. It was before he entered into that odd writing partnership where some external force (Piesiewicz) created some sort of conventional frame on which our artistlover could drape his folds, lace and knives. Before that clever partnership that hid the mechanics.

    Here you can see his favored machine, the simple fold: a movie about movie-making and love, and all the related dimensions he knew at the time: intellectual, death, rutting, wistfulness, justice. Passions all. Urges all. At the end, it loops upon itself, the ladder complete to start again at the beginning of the next.

    It isn't particularly profound or satisfying by itself. But if you are a lucid mind today, chances are you think about narrative flows and how you and the world use them to wind around and buffet each other. And almost certainly you have had tea with Kieslowski.

    If so, you'll find this model of his younger self will tell you something about yourself in an odd, indirectly magical way. If you do, check out the trigger for passion here: Chopin.

    Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
    8lastliberal

    Cinema is the first art. - Lenin

    An innocent enough decision. Filip (Jerzy Stuhr) buys a camera to film his new daughter. It costs two months salary and it makes him a celebrity of sorts as he is the only one in town that has one.

    Now, his boss wants him to film the 25th anniversary celebration of the company. He really gets into filming and soon runs headlong into "rules." Of course, you have rules in a communist country. His wife is not too excited about his new hobby, but he soon gets his film entered into a film festival.

    Soon, like all who truly love film, Filip is attending screenings, talking to directors, and reading film magazines to improve his craft. But, more and more his wife is displeased, and his boss is cooling to the idea as he moves from filming the company to social statements.

    His desire for tranquility gives way to a desire for fame and art at the cost of his wife and family.

    He also discovers the unintended consequences of reporting the truth. In the end he turns the camera on himself as he realizes he had everything in the beginning and lost it all.

    A fascinating look at real cinema and finding what you want.
    7paul2001sw-1

    Portrait of the artist

    Krzyszof Kieslowksi begun his career as a documentary film-maker. From the start, he seemed to know two things: that in the shabby, feudal bureaucracy that was communist Poland, everything was political; and that the camera is never truly neutral. It was the second concern that saw him shift into telling fictional, constructed stories; while the first, and his own struggles as a young director, inspired the subject of 'Camera Buff', his first feature. As well as its immediate subject, the film is also a fascinating portrayal of an unfashionable subject, namely the class system, alive and well in the supposed socialist utopia (Kieslowski was a great admirer of Ken Loach, so perhaps we should not be too surprised). The film starts as a black comedy in the manner of the tenth part of his later 'Dekalog', and is both very funny and immediately true to life; as it progresses, it becomes more serious but there isn't quite the emotional intensity that marks his greatest works. The score is also less remarkable than those in the films he made with Zbigniew Priesner, his permanent collaborator from the mid 1980s. But his skill at composing images that are simultaneously profoundly ordinary and starkly arresting is very much in evidence, as is the characteristic sense of an all-pervasive greyness in the lives of his characters, punctured only by shafts of colour when his hapless hero comes into contact with the affluent metropolitan elite. In Dennis Potter's 'The Singing Detective', a central theme is the way that the artist will stop at nothing in using their own life as material, and this is also a theme here, growing in importance as the movie progresses. It's an unusual subject for a debut, and can perhaps be seen as Kieslowski laying his cards on the table before he begun the game. Greatness lay just around the corner.

    Related interests

    Bill Pullman, John Candy, Joan Rivers, Daphne Zuniga, and Lorene Yarnell Jansson in La Folle Histoire de l'espace (1987)
    Parody
    Martin Sheen in À la Maison Blanche (1999)
    Political Drama
    Peter Sellers in Dr. Folamour ou : comment j'ai appris à ne plus m'en faire et à aimer la bombe (1964)
    Satire
    Meryl Streep in Le diable s'habille en Prada (2006)
    Workplace Drama
    Will Ferrell in Présentateur vedette: La légende de Ron Burgundy (2004)
    Comedy
    Mahershala Ali and Alex R. Hibbert in Moonlight (2016)
    Drama
    Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca (1942)
    Romance

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      The film's opening scene and Irka's nightmare about a hawk killing a chicken are reminiscent of Ken Loach's Kes (1969) -- a film about a boy who takes to training a wild kestrel in order to escape his troubled life. Later, Filip can be seen reading a filmmaking text and turning to a section about Ken Loach and Kes (1969). This reference is twofold. First, Filip is clearly inspired by filmmakers like Loach in making social realist films about working-class people. Second, Irka is tormented by images mirroring Kes (1969) which represent her husband's budding obsession with this type of filmmaking.
    • Quotes

      Piotrek Krawczyk: [looking at a roll of motion picture film] It's beautiful what you guys do. A person's no longer alive, yet she's still here. It's beautiful.

    • Connections
      Featured in Fejezetek a film történetéböl: A lengyel film (1990)
    • Soundtracks
      Walc e-moll
      by Frédéric Chopin

      Performed by Krystian Zimmermann

    Top picks

    Sign in to rate and Watchlist for personalized recommendations
    Sign in

    FAQ15

    • How long is Camera Buff?Powered by Alexa

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • October 26, 1988 (France)
    • Country of origin
      • Poland
    • Language
      • Polish
    • Also known as
      • Camera Buff
    • Filming locations
      • Rabka-Zdrój, Malopolskie, Poland(train station)
    • Production company
      • Zespol Filmowy "Tor"
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      • 1h 52m(112 min)
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Mono
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.37 : 1

    Contribute to this page

    Suggest an edit or add missing content
    • Learn more about contributing
    Edit page

    More to explore

    Recently viewed

    Please enable browser cookies to use this feature. Learn more.
    Get the IMDb App
    Sign in for more accessSign in for more access
    Follow IMDb on social
    Get the IMDb App
    For Android and iOS
    Get the IMDb App
    • Help
    • Site Index
    • IMDbPro
    • Box Office Mojo
    • License IMDb Data
    • Press Room
    • Advertising
    • Jobs
    • Conditions of Use
    • Privacy Policy
    • Your Ads Privacy Choices
    IMDb, an Amazon company

    © 1990-2025 by IMDb.com, Inc.