Camera Buff - Plot

Plot

The film is set in the late 1970s in Wielice, People's Republic of Poland. Factory worker Filip Mosz (Jerzy Stuhr) is a nervous new father and a doting husband when he begins filming his daughter's first days with a newly acquired 8mm movie camera. He believes, as he tells his wife, that he now has everything he ever wanted since his youth as an orphan, but when the local Communist Party boss asks him to film an upcoming jubilee celebration of his plant, his fascination with the possibilities of film begins to transform his life.

When they see his edited short film of the conference/celebration, his superiors find his shot of a pigeon useless and his shots of several negotiators at a business meeting too probing. His boss suggests that Filip cut the shots of the entertainers being paid, the men going to the bathroom, and the business meeting. (He allows Filip to keep the pigeons as long as the entertainers being paid is taken out.) He submits the film to a festival in another town, and gains second prize. No, first prize is awarded because the committee feels that the work was not good enough, even Filip's work, however, he is given an award as an incentive to keep filming.

His responsibilities to his wife and daughter slip off his radar as his gaze fixes on Anna Wlodarczyk (a young, self-described "amatorka" who encourages Filip's filmmaking), various activities he films, and the world of cinephiles.

The Kraków TV station airs Filip's film about a little person ("cripple" or "dwarf" in the English subtitles) who works at the factory and another one about the misallocated town renovation funds. Filip's boss gives him a talking: work on the new nursery school will have to stop because of his expose, and Stasio will lose his job.

After that, Filip gets the canister for his as-yet undeveloped new film about the brickyard, opens it and tosses the film out to be exposed to the light. Alone at home, his wife has left with their daughter, Filip turns his, now 16mm, camera on himself.