Still from Kieślowski's "The Decalogue - Seven", photo: courtesy of the National Film Archives - www.fototeka.fn.org.pl
Simple stories about complex human feelings, precision and accumulation of detail that serve to build emotions and convey symbolic meaning, Krzysztof Kieślowski’s oeuvres dare to answer the question of how one should live and place Three Colours and the Decalogue among European classics
Arguably one of the most influential Polish film directors of the last twenty years, Krzysztof Kieślowski's films have won worldwide acclaim, most notably the Three Colours Trilogy and the made-for-TV Decalogue, nominated for several international awards including the Palme D'or at the Cannes Film Festival, and have since become cult favourites. "What delights some about Kieślowski's current cinema annoys and repulses others. What appears to some to be fresh, innovative, wise, moving, penetrating, to others seems 'counterfeit,' 'metaphysical gibberish,' 'professional mystification" writes film critic Stanisław Zawiśliński.
Concerned almost exclusively with the sphere of human emotions, not anchored in a specific reality and vibrating with various props, objects, gestures and people encountered by the protagonists, Kięslowski’s feature films are stripped of the trappings of reality and as Kieślowski himself said "enrich [the] portrayal of people with that entire sphere of feelings, intuitions, dreams and superstitions that constitute the inner life of every human being".
The MK2 Bibliothèque cinema screens the new digital version of artistic and box office successes The Three Colours trilogy, the entire Decalogue series, other features and his early documentaries. Widely known as a director of narrative features, was for many years predominantly a maker of documentaries. Critic Marek Hendrykowski writse,
Documentaries were Krzysztof Kieślowski's first great love. Today, when his worldwide successes as a director of feature films have obscured his documentaries, eclipsed them, we somehow forget how significantly the documentary film years preceding this success shaped Kieślowski's artistic identity and how much the his features owe to his experience as a documentary filmmaker.
The largest retrospective of films by Krzysztof Kieślowski in France is accompanied by an exhibition showing pictures taken by the Polish director during his studies in the city of Łódź shown to the public thanks to his wife Maria Kieślowska, personal memorabilia, and a gallery of posters to his films from all over the world – The World of Krzysztof Kieślowski. After the premiere showing in Paris, the exhibitions and selected works from the retrospective will visit other cities in France, usually accompanying screenings of the Kinopolska festival.
The Quad Cinema in New York City is also hosting screenings of the retrospective between the 17th-23rd of August 2012. For more information, see: www.quadcinema.com
Sources: culture.pl, Play Poland
Author: Marta Jazowska