By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Ziggy Kozlowski Receives 2015 Polish Film Festival in America Golden Ciupaga Award

I can hardly imagine more hardworking and humble behind-the-stage PR professional than Ziggy Kozlowski who makes such a colossal difference in introducing foreign language films, including the ones made by Polish directors. His enthusiasm and expertise are simply priceless…

Christopher Kamyszew
PFFA Founder & Society for Arts/Society Films CEO

Ziggy Kozlowski is a partner at the public relations firm Block-Korenbrot Public Relations where he has worked for the past twenty years. In his role as publicist, he has worked on the release and award campaigns of some of most significant independent and foreign films of the past two decades, among them CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON, the BLUE WHITE RED trilogy, HOOP DREAMS, LEAVING LAS VEGAS, AMOUR and the Oscar-winning CRASH. His client roster includes Sony Pictures Classics, HBO, Fox TV, Lionsgate Releasing, and New Line Cinema. Personal clients include Paul Haggis, director, writer, producer, CRASH. Ziggy is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences.

Ziggy Kozlowski was born in 1956 in Inowroclaw, Poland, but has spent most of his life in the United States. He began his professional career at the Chicago firm John Iltis Associates after graduating from Chicago’s DePaul University in 1979.  He worked at JIA from 1979-1987 and moved to Los Angeles in April, 1987  He has worked on national campaigns, field campaigns, special projects and personal publicity at a variety of LA-based entertainment concerns including TNT, and 20th Century Fox.

Over the years, Ziggy has worked with a wide roster of European filmmakers including many Polish film directors on their Oscar campaigns and projects. He successfully worked on films by Andrzej Wajda (Lifetime Achievement Award; WALESA), Krzysztof Kieslowski (BLUE, WHITE, RED; DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE), Agnieszka Holland (the Academy-nominated IN DARKNESS; THIRD MIRACLE, TOTAL ECLIPSE; OLIVER, OLIVER), Roman Polanski (DEATH AND THE MAIDEN, CARNAGE, BITTER MOON), Krzysztof Zanussi, Jerzy Hoffman and many others. His generous assistance and expertise contributed to many international successes of Polish films.

Mr. Kozlowski will receive his award in person during the Closing Night ceremony on Sunday, November 22 at 5:00 PM. in Muvico 18, 9701 Bryn Mawr Ave, Rosemont. The Golden Ciupaga (a tomahawk of Polish Highlanders) Award was created and executed by Polish artist Tomasz Krzpiet.

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One Response to “Ziggy Kozlowski Receives 2015 Polish Film Festival in America Golden Ciupaga Award”

  1. I have been acquainted with Ziggy for many years now. I met him as a little nobody with a drive to see a specific film he was promoting. I was treated so well by him that I have stayed in touch all these years. He was professional, friendly and never made me feel like just a “groupie” or some small insignificant person. He absolutely deserves this award for his professionalism to the film community both large and small.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon