An autobiography on the director Piotr Kielar. With the help of amateur film materials and photographs from the family archive, it tells about his father who left him when he was two-years-old.
An autobiography. With the help of amateur film materials and photographs from the family archive, the author tells us about the relation with his father, who left him when he was two-years-old and went to Canada, where he worked at a space flight programme. The letters that the father sometimes sent to his son are full of didactic platitudes and cold rhetoric. They have the warmth of the non-existent atmosphere of the Moon. After 25 years of separation the son meets his father. He does not bear any grudge against him. He is only surprised that the person he hugs by way of greeting seems to be hollow inside.
"This film is deeply self-ridiculing and, because of this, very bitter. In fact it does not speak about an egotistic father from America, but about the failed expectations of the son from Poland. About his loneliness and longings; feelings that, with the course of time, fade like old photographs printed on poor paper. The making of this film must have been a form of auto-therapy for the director, a way of dealing with his own childhood." (Lech Kurpiewski)
- Tata z Ameryki / Dad from America, Poland, 1997. Director and screenplay: Piotr Kielar. Special cinematography: Ryszard Kujawski. Music: Dariusz Gzyra. Sound: Bogumiła Kłopotowska. Editing: Jarosław Ostanówko. Executive producer: Mirosław Dembiński. Production: Canal +, Everest Film Studio, National Film, Television & Theatre School in Łódź. Colour, 27 min.
Awards:
- Special Jury Award "for a self-ridiculing picture of the generation gap" at the Cracow Festival of Documentaries and Short Films, 1997;
- STO Studio Award at the Media Festival in Łódź, 1997;
- award at the Neubrandenburg "Dokument ART" Festival in Germany, 1998.
Source: the catalogue "Young Polish Cinema", published by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, June 2007