Zbigniew Rybczyński
Zbigniew Rybczyński (Polish: [ˈzbiɡɲɛf rɨpˈtʂɨj̃skʲi]; born 27 January 1949) is a Polish filmmaker, director, cinematographer, screenwriter, creator of experimental animated films, and multimedia artist who has won numerous prestigious industry awards both in the United States and internationally including the 1982 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for Tango.
Zbigniew Rybczyński
27 January 1949
Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film
1982 Tango
Polish Film Festival
1975 Zupa
Cannes Film Festival
1987 Imagine
He has taught cinematography and digital cinematography, and has worked as a researcher of blue and greenscreen compositing technology at Ultimatte Corporation. He is renowned for his innovative audiovisual techniques and for his pioneering experimentation in the field of new image technology.
In March 2009, Rybczyński returned to Poland, taking up residence in Wrocław, where he set up the Center for Audiovisual Technologies (CeTA) at the site of the city's historic Feature Film Studio. The center, which officially opened in January 2013, includes a state-of-the-art studio designed by Rybczyński for the production of multi-layer film images, and an institute for research into images and visual technologies.
After Rybczyński discovered and publicized corruption in CeTA, he was fired and subsequently declared the renunciation of his Polish citizenship.[1][2]
Early life and career[edit]
Rybczyński was born in Łódź, Poland. He grew up in Warsaw, where he attended a secondary-level art school and then worked briefly at the |Studio Miniatur Filmowych (1968-1969). He studied cinematography at the Łódź Film School (1969-1973); his thesis films were Take Five and Plamuz. During his studies, he became a founding member of the Film Form Workshop (Warsztat Formy Filmowej), the most important Polish neo avant-garde group. He also honed his film-making skills working as a cinematographer for young directors like Andrzej Barański, Piotr Andrejew, Wojciech Wiszniewski, and Filip Bajon on shorts, documentaries and educational films, and on Grzegorz Królikiewicz's feature-length The Dancing Hawk (Tańczący Jastrząb). His films from the period include: The Talk (Rozmowa, TV) and Gropingly (Po Omacku) by Andrejew, Videocassette (Wideokaseta) by Bajon, and Wanda Gościmińska. Włókniarka by Wiszniewski. From 1973 to 1980, Rybczyński made his own films at the Se-Ma-For Studio in Łódź. He established the Dr. Stanzl special effects studio in Vienna for the Austrian public TV station ORF, and worked there from 1977 to 1980. During the political unrest in Poland in 1980, he was the head of the founders' committee of the Se-Ma-For studio branch of Solidarity.
Emigration to the United States[edit]
In 1982, during the martial law period, he managed to arrange a job contract that enabled him to leave Poland for Vienna, where he applied for political asylum. The following year, he and his family emigrated to the US, where they lived in Los Angeles and then New York. The first works he made in the US were the short experimental videos "The Day Before" and "The Discreet Charm of the Diplomacy", both made in 1984 on a commission from NBC's The New Show. In 1985, he launched his own studio – ZBIG VISION – in New York, which he subsequently outfitted with the latest video, computer and HDTV technology. It was in this studio that he made his most important American films, including Steps (1987), The Fourth Dimension (1988), The Orchestra (1990), Manhattan (1991), and Kafka (1992), which were showered with enthusiastic critical acclaim and numerous awards. In the, US he also made short music-based pieces that added to his popularity and acclaim. Between 1984 and 1989, he made more than 30 music videos for such artists as Mick Jagger, Yoko Ono, Lou Reed, Simple Minds, Cameo, Art of Noise, Chuck Mangione, Pet Shop Boys, Lady Pank, The Alan Parsons Project, Supertramp, and Rush. One of them – "Imagine" (1986), made for John Lennon's composition – was the first music video ever made using high-definition technology.
In 1994, Rybczyński moved to Germany, where he co-founded the Centrum Für Neue Bildgestaltung, an experimental film center in Berlin, and later worked in Cologne. He returned to Los Angeles in 2001, where he worked for the Ultimatte Corporation and continued his research in the area where art, science, and digital technology intersect working out new standards for moving images. Among the results of Rybczyński's long-term research and experimentation are his inventions in the field of electronic-image technology, for which he holds several US patents, and which are widely used in the film and TV industries.
In March 2009, Rybczyński returned to Poland, taking up residence in Wrocław, where he set up the Center for Audiovisual Technologies (CeTa) at the site of the city's historic Feature Film Studio. The center, which officially opened in January 2013, includes a state-of-the-art studio designed by Rybczyński for the production of multi-layer film images, and an institute for research into images and visual technologies.[3]
Rybczyński was a professor at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (1998-2001), and has also taught at many other art and film schools, including the National Film School in Łódź, Columbia University in New York, and Yoshiba University of Art and Design in Tokyo.
In 2014, Rybczyński settled on a two acre ranch near Tucson, Arizona. Together with his wife, Dorota Zglobicka who is also a filmmaker, Zbig created Gila Monster Studios. Currently, they are in pre-production for their upcoming feature film, The Designer.[4]