Friendship, loyalty, art and ambition collide in the life of Romek, a young Polish costumer working on his first professional production in a state-run repertory company. When his best friend Sowa is fired because he argued with a senior performer, Romek tries to defend him. In a moment of triumph, he sees his works being worn during a premier performance but then is called into the office to sign a paper denouncing his friend Sowa. He must sign, or lose his job. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie GuideRead More »

a description by one of IMdB members:
A group of veterans recount a horrifying experience when trapped in a minefield, resulting in each losing their sight.

This is an incredibly powerful anti-war film, showing the horrors of war first hand, in stark close-ups without gratuitous gore. The physical injuries are not quite so emphasized as much as the emotional scaring, with the soldiers expressing their deep regret and longing for a better quality of life.

The film is edited in such a way that story becomes one detailed account, with each character providing his piece of the story. Their collective suffering seems akin to witnessing an AA meeting, except that this group wish to make it clear to the world that they were victims of misguided patriotism, with no control over their fate.Read More »

a description by one of IMdB members:
With X-Ray I feel Kieslowski beginning to repeat himself. While his investigations of collective decision making at the workplace are superficially similar, he is mining deeper and deeper at a particular face exposing certain anomalies in Democratic Centralism. Here he collects the stories of men in a tubercular sanitarium which repeats, to a lesser effect, the methodology of Bylem zolnierzem (I Was a Soldier) (1970). After everyone has told their story, and are seen in a long shot sitting on a terrace attended by a very pretty nurse, Kieslowski delivers the punchline- a bus descends into a nearby town whose factories fill the valley with smoke containing who knows what health destroying toxins. Its all as simple as one, two, three.Read More »

a description by one of IMdB members:

Though this film illustrates how death has been reduced to ‘The Numbers’ it is implied at the end that both life and death have been reduced to the numbers. This film is uniquely shot from the point-of-view of the bureaucrats whose job it is to deregistrant the living to give their survivors permission to buy things like graves, coffins etc. The first image is of tearing out the pictures from identity books. It seems to be some weirdly arcane quasi-religious ritual whose purpose is at once obvious and inexplicable.

The frisson of this film is having the usual bureaucratic rigmarole, petty rules and arbitrary specifications implemented by some not so very terrible people, come up against people at their most vulnerable and emotional condition. These people have just had a loved one die and they are being dealt with by the book, by the numbers.

Background music, when its heard, is a harpsichord concerto.Read More »

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Kieslowski’s thesis film from the State Higher School of Film, Television and Theatre in Lodz. A portrait of the city of Lodz. Images of buildings that are falling apart are accompanied by optimistic commentary about the city and its industries. @culture.plRead More »

a description by one of IMdB members:
A pretty 17 year old girl is told she’s pregnant by a doctor who also says that she is not a candidate, for some unexplained reason, for an abortion. Instead she is going to marry her boyfriend. The boyfriend, 20, is going to get an exemption from the draft for this. Someone say ‘silver lining’?Read More »

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Portrait of factory watchman Marian Osuch, who turns out to be a fanatic of discipline wanting to control everything and everyone. A metaphorical image of totalitarianism. @culture.plRead More »

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A film about bricklayer Józef Malesa, a former ‘leading laborer’ and Communist Party activist. Malesa reminisces about his past, the Stalinist years and the turmoil of October 1956. The film provides a view of Polish history through the eyes of someone who was first seduced by the enthusiasm of building a new reality and then disappointed by the new order. @culture.plRead More »

Kieslowski on Kieslowski
Edited by Danusia Stock
Published by Faber and Faber, 1993 (268p.)
Quote:
From Danusia Stok on the genesis of the book:
This book is largely based on interviews recorded with Kieslowski in Paris in December 1991 and May 1992 when he was working on the scripts of the triptych Three Colours. A third set of interviews, covering the triptych, was recorded in Paris in the summer of 1993 once Three Colours had been shot.
Excerpts from Kieslowski’s reflections written for the monthly cultural magazine Du (Zurich, Switzerland) have been worked into the text. The passages are my own direct translation of Kieslowski’s original words.Read More »