Zygmunt Dzieciolowski

Zygmunt Dzieciolowski's picture

Zygmunt is a Polish born journalist, writer and documentary film director.

For the last twenty years his main interests have been Russia and other post soviet republics. He took up journalism in 1987, rather late in his career, when communism was about to collapse and censorship and strict party control weakened.

Since the late eighties, Dzieciolowski’s feature stories have been published by leading international newspapers and magazines in such countries as Germany, Switzerland, Poland, England, France, Russia, and Norway.  In the course of his work he has visited the most remote regions of Russia such as Baikal, Chukotka and Kamchatka, and interviewed its best known politicians and intellectuals including Mikhail Gorbachev, Roman Abramovich, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Anna Politkovskaya.  He is a regular author covering Russian affairs for the London-based e-zine opendemocracy.net.  He is now also editor of their Russian project openDemocracy Russia, produced in collaboration with the Russian e-zine www.polit.ru.

He produced and co-directed his first documentary film in 2004. “Contest” presented a beauty pageant in the Siberian prison labor camp for women. Dzieciolowski and his co-director Mumin Shakirov received a special award for this film at the Moscow International Human Rights Festival in 2005. “Contest” was seen by TV viewers in more than 10 countries.  In 2005, Dzieciolowski co-directed a 52 minute documentary on the Russian actors who appeared in Soviet film and theatre in the role of the October Revolution leader Vladimir Lenin. The film, presented on the Russian nationwide NTV channel, had excellent reviews in the Russian press. In 2006, following his trip to the Russian Far East, Dzieciolowski was writer for the short film “Destination Chukotka”, produced by the International Fund for Animal Welfare.  In 2008, he was field producer for the American cable channel HDNet for their 40 minute documentary presenting the Russian pro Kremlin youth organization “Nashi”.

He is author of the book “Planet Russia”, a collection of his selected features from Russia and other post soviet republics, published in Poland in 2005.

Links to recent work:

openDemocracy story archive
http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/Zygmunt_Dzieciolowski.jsp

The Putin Youth
http://www.hd.net/transcript.html?air_master_id=A5049