Kazimierz Karabasz

Birthday: 1930-05-06
Deathday: 2018-08-11
Birthplace: Bydgoszcz, Poland
Gender: Male

Kazimierz Karabasz (Polish pronunciation: [kaˈʑimjɛʑ kaˈrabaʂ]; May 6, 1930 in Bydgoszcz, Poland – August 11, 2018) was a Polish documentary filmmaker. A graduate of the Łódź Film School in 1956, he also taught the documentary programme there for many years.

Although his work is now rarely seen, his most famous film, a ten-minute documentary short entitled Muzykanci / The Musicians, is an extra on the Criterion Collection edition of Krzysztof Kieślowski's film The Double Life of Véronique. Kieślowski, whom Karabasz mentored, chose this as one of his personal all-time top ten films in a 1992 poll conducted by the film magazine Sight & Sound.

Karabasz is known in Poland for influencing generations of documentary filmmakers to come with his approach to filmmaking called "school of Karabasz" (Polish: szkoła Karabasza). The style focuses of regular people's lives and requires a perspective of an observer with zero impact on the observed object. Muzykanci is considered a textbook example of "Karabasz school". The method was especially popular in the sixties and associated with the œuvre of Władysław Ślesicki, Andrzej Trzos-Rastawiecki, Krystyna Gryczełowska and Danuta Halladin among others.

Credits

Year Title
2004-05-07 Encounters
1999-07-15 At Dawn and Before Dusk
1997-04-01 Portrait in a Drop of Water
1991-10-18 For Example, 9 Grzybowska Street
1985-05-19 Remembrance
1981-04-01 Material Test
1977-10-14 Summer in Zabno
1977-09-20 Two of Us
1974-01-01 Punkt widzenia
1973-04-01 Krystyna M. Portrait Sketches
1971-01-01 Sierpień - zapis kronikalny
1968-06-01 A Year in the Life of Franek W.
1965-04-01 On the Threshold
1963-01-01 Birds
1962-05-01 Pierwszy krok
1962-01-02 Where We Live
1961-06-09 Railway Junction
1960-06-03 People on the Road
1960-03-04 The Musicians
1960-01-02 A Bit Different World
1959-04-01 A Day Without Sunshine
1958-01-31 From Powisle
1957-01-01 The People From an Empty Zone
1956-01-01 Where the Devil Says Goodnight
1955-01-01 Day In, Day Out