To mark Kazimierz Kutz's eighteeth birthday, the publishing house Znak has published his biography.
"Kazimierz Kutz's mum, Anastazja, once said to her son: 'You will not be destroyed by a nuclear bomb, but by a woman'. And now a woman has written a book about Kutz. Well?
Aleksandra Klich and Kazimierz Kutz: a reporter known for her sensitivity and prudence on one hand, a director bursting with spontaneity, love for life, creative zest, sense of humour and defiance on the other. He has an exhaustible stock of sentimental and spicy stories up his sleeve and considers himself a man of non-gentry culture, a combination of lucidity and naivety, a born orator, a shrimp from Silesia. Others add that he has an abominable character, but is a genius, and whoever has seen his Silesian films wanted to become a Silesian.
'Cały ten Kutz' is in fact a story about Silesian bitterness, the conditions of everyday living and doing art under communism, about the set ways, snobberies and longings, the search for an own artistic vision and the resulting suffering and happiness, and the difficulties of enjoying the hard-won freedom. We accompany the child from a tenement house in Szopienice; the student who feels ashamed when parcels with suet, drippings and strings of garlic come from home; the young ladies' man director who hates Silesia for its coarseness and poverty; the prodigal son returning to his deeply loved homeland to 'vomit out the Silesian barbed wire' while working on what would become his famous film triptych; finally the senator and deputy of post-communist Poland. We also accompany his Silesian family, his numerous friends who are actors, directors, writers and politicians, all of whom either have something interesting to say or have experienced things worthy of grand film scenes. 'Cały ten Kutz' is a rich, multi-level, brilliantly documented and witty book about Kutz, Silesia and Poland.
So far Anastazja's prophecy has neither come true generally nor with regard to Aleksandra Klich the woman specifically. Her book shows Kutz the indestructible, and one cannot but congratulate them both: the author for the choice of her character and the character for the choice of his author." (Małgorzata Szejnert)
Source of Polish version: www.znak.com.pl
Aleksandra Klich
Cały ten Kutz. Biografia niepokorna / All that Kutz. Biography of a Rebel
Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy "Znak", Kraków, 2009
144 x 205, 320 pages, hardcover
ISBN 978-83-7552-477-2