Against Indifference: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski

6/1/06 to 6/27/06

Blind Chance, June 8

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Past Films

No End
- Tuesday, June 27 19:30
An activist lawyer's widow fights to overcome her sorrow by helping her husband's remaining client, a jailed labor activist, in this key portrait of Poland under martial law, made immediately after the crackdown on the Solidarity movement. "Grief-stricken, sensual and hard to forget."-L.A. Times. "Essential viewing."-Time Out
The Scar
- Wednesday, June 21 19:30
Kieslowski used the circumstances and stories of earlier documentary subjects for this fictional work about an idealistic factory manager undone by greed, incompetence, and indifference. Satire? Metaphor? More like social realism. With short Slate.
Personnel and Final Documentary Shorts
- Tuesday, June 20 19:30
A young tailor, in love with the magic of theater, is quickly disillusioned after getting a job with an acting troupe in Kieslowski's intriguing feature debut, made for Polish television. With shorts From the Point of View of the Night Porter, Seven Women of Different Ages, Talking Heads, and Railway Station.
Three Colors: Red
- Saturday, June 17 20:45
A chance encounter brings together two solitary individuals-a model (Irène Jacob) and a retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant)-in Kieslowski's meditation on the need for "fraternity."
Three Colors: Blue
- Saturday, June 17 16:00
Please see June 10.
Three Colors: White
- Saturday, June 17 18:45
Kieslowski returned to his native Poland for this earthy, very Eastern European comedy involving a beaten-down Pole who aims for "equality" and plots revenge against his beautiful French ex-wife (Julie Delpy).
Camera Buff
- Wednesday, June 14 19:30
A factory worker and family man takes up 8mm moviemaking to film his daughter's birth, but winds up caught between self-expression and state censorship. A remarkable paean to the thrill and danger of artistic expression, starring Jerzy Stuhr. "Outstanding! Both hilarious and down to earth."-Variety
Early Works, Program 3: Truth and Fiction
- Tuesday, June 13 19:30
Kieslowski goes behind the scenes of a Warsaw hospital in Hospital, an Iron Curtain E.R.: underfunded, overcrowded, and fueled by cigarette smoke. The Underground Passage is his first narrative film, while in Curriculum Vitae he combines truth and fiction by filming a real Communist Party tribunal debating a fictional case.
Decalogue 7 and 8
- Sunday, June 11 15:00
Please see June 3.
Decalogue 9 and 10
- Sunday, June 11 17:15
(No 2nd-feature discount.) Please see June 3.
The Double Life of Véronique
- Saturday, June 10 18:30
Please see June 8.
Three Colors: Blue
- Saturday, June 10 20:30
After her husband and daughter die in a car accident, a young woman (Juliette Binoche) seeks to liberate herself from all connections-memory, friendship, love-in the first installment ("Liberty") of Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy, based on the symbolic colors of the French flag. Repeated on June 17.
The Double Life of Véronique
- Thursday, June 8 19:00
Irène Jacob made her screen debut as two Veronicas, one Polish, one French, each blessed with a beautiful voice and cursed with a bad heart. Metaphysical cinema at its finest, "a tour-de-force of flickering, incandescent images."-Village Voice. Repeated on June 10.
Blind Chance
- Thursday, June 8 21:00
Kieslowski's Solidarity-era precursor to the Three Colors trilogy is three films in one, telling the possible futures of its protagonist: Party member, dissident, or apolitical family man. "One of Kieslowski's best films. . . . Should not be missed."-Hollywood Reporter
Early Works, Program 2: In Everyone's Life There Are Stories
- Wednesday, June 7 19:30
This program showcases a director merging the truth-telling capacity of documentary with the narrative richness of fiction. Included are Bricklayer, X-Ray, and First Love, a precursor to reality TV that follows a young couple as they prepare to become parents.
Early Works, Program 1: To Describe the World
- Tuesday, June 6 19:30
Socially committed, relevatory cinema, Kieslowski's political documentaries follow Polish workers' strikes (Workers 1971), a racer's tangles with bureaucracy (Before the Rally), the conflict between workers and management (Factory), and a funeral home staff's indifference (Refrain).
Decalogue 1 and 2
- Sunday, June 4 13:30
Please see June 1.
Decalogue 3 and 4
- Sunday, June 4 15:45
(No 2nd-feature discount.) Please see June 2.
Decalogue 5 and 6
- Sunday, June 4 19:00
(No 2nd-feature discount.) Please see June 2.
Decalogue 7 and 8
- Saturday, June 3 18:30
Boguslaw Linda (Blind Chance) stars as a witness to a custody battle in "Thou Shalt Not Steal." In "Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness," the repercussions of the Holocaust are brought to life in an ethics class. Repeated on June 11.
Decalogue 9 and 10
- Saturday, June 3 20:45
(No 2nd-feature discount.) A Lothario turned impotent husband allows his wife a lover, with ruinous results, in "Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Wife," while Jerzy Stuhr and Zbigniew Zamachowski play squabbling brothers in the comedic "Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Goods." Repeated on June 11.
Decalogue 3 and 4
- Friday, June 2 19:00
A woman appears at her ex-lover's home on Christmas Eve in "Honor the Sabbath Day." In "Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother," a young student discovers a web of family deceptions. Repeated on June 4.
Decalogue 5 and 6
- Friday, June 2 21:15
(No 2nd-feature discount.) A man murders a taxi driver and is sentenced to death in "Thou Shalt Not Kill," "the most unsettling and riveting of Kieslowski's series" (Hollywood Reporter), while a young man spies on an older woman in "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery." Repeated on June 4.
Kieslowski's First Films (Free Screening!)
- Thursday, June 1 17:30
Free Screening! Rare early works and student films by Kieslowski, "one of the greatest of all filmmakers."-Roger Ebert
Decalogue 1 and 2
- Thursday, June 1 19:30
A father and son put their faith in science while a wife shares a startling secret with her husband's doctor in the debut episodes of Kieslowki's ten-part series based on the Ten Commandments, "a masterwork of modern cinema."-N.Y. Times. Repeated on June 4.

Against Indifference: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski

6/1/06 to 6/27/06

Krzysztof Kieslowski's ten-part Decalogue, each film based on one of the Ten Commandments, and his Three Colors trilogy, formed around the symbolism of the French flag, earned him international acclaim for their ambition and scope, while his early Polish films stand as testaments to the power of a socially committed cinema. Born in 1941, Kieslowski studied at the Lodz Film School, training ground for such directors as Andrzej Wajda and Roman Polanski, and was drawn to documentary film as a reaction against the lack of attention given to Poland's social reality by its leaders. “If something hasn't been described, then it doesn't officially exist. If we describe it, we bring it to life,” he said. But all Kieslowski's films, both his Polish works and the later films made in France, are remarkable for an ability to move beyond the surface realism of cinema, to grasp something more personal, more spiritual. His concerns...

The Pacific Film Archive is proud to present an almost complete retrospective-including rarely screened early documentaries and shorts-of this director whose reputation has only grown since his untimely death ten years ago. “To call Kieslowski the premier filmmaker of the last two decades seems hardly enough,” wrote The Los Angeles Times. “Without him, the international film scene . . . is definitely a sadder and lonelier place.”

Jason Sanders

THOU SHALT SEE THE ENTIRE DECALOGUE, AT A DISCOUNTED RATE!
Due to the extraordinary expense of presenting this work, PFA's second-feature discount will not apply to screenings of The Decalogue. Instead, we are offering the opportunity to buy tickets to the complete Decalogue at a 20 percent discount with our Decalogue Pass, including one ticket to each of the five programs (each program contains two episodes). BAM/PFA members and UC Berkeley students, $16 (reduced from $20); Non-members, $32 (reduced from $40).

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Curated at PFA by Susan Oxtoby. The Pacific Film Archive acknowledges the following individuals and organizations for their generous support of this series: Monika Fabijanska, Polish Cultural Institute, New York; Helena Dametka, Polish National Film Archive (PNFA), Warsaw; Lodz Film School; Documentary and Feature Film Studio, Warsaw; Aleksandra Biernacka, Polish Television (TVP); Richard Peña, Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York; Birgit Kemner, MK2, Paris; Jonathan Howell, New Yorker Films; Gary Palmucci, Kino International, New York; Walt Disney Studios; and Julie Fontaine and Janet Kim, Miramax Films.