Many years ago, Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog changed my stupid little life. The series is Kieślowski’s most acclaimed work, possibly “the best dramatic work ever done specifically for television” and has won numerous international awards, though it was not widely released outside Europe until the late 1990s.
In his book Eyes Wide Open, Frederick Raphael reported that, while discussing Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick said the Dekalog was the best thing he’d seen in years… and he wished he had made it himself. Kubrick wrote an admiring foreword to the published screenplay in 1991:
I am always reluctant to single out some particular feature of the work of a major filmmaker because it tends inevitably to simplify and reduce the work. But in this book of screenplays by Krzysztof Kieslowski and his co-author, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, it should not be out of place to observe that they have the very rare ability to dramatize their ideas rather than just talking about them. By making their points through the dramatic action of the story they gain the added power of allowing the audience to discover what’s really going on rather than being told. They do this with such dazzling skill, you never see the ideas coming and don’t realize until much later how profoundly they have reached your heart. —Stanley Kubrick
All the episodes are available on YouTube with English subtitles on Xanthinusa4’s channel. Enjoy.
The Decalogue (Special Edition Complete Set) (1988) on Amazon.
Krzysztof Kieślowski while making Trois couleurs: Bleu (1993)
Previously on Cinephilia & Beyond:
Krzysztof Kieślowski — Cinema Lesson in Three Colors: Blue
Q:Thank you thank you thank you. Your site is amazing, fun and so full of EVERYTHING. I am totally addicted. And your recognition of Kieslowski touched my heart. Best wishes from Magosha from Poland.
Thank you. Kieslowski is my Light.
Krzysztof Kieslowski lived the life he wanted to live, though not enough of it. He was a giant of the cinema and a crusader for humanity. I’ll miss the movies, I’ll miss the vodka, but more important, I’ll miss the man.
In Memoriam - Krzysztof Kieslowski
To Smoke and Drink in L.A.
Premiere, June 1996
By Harvey Weinstein
Koncert zyczen (1967) aka Concert of Wishes
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Poland/1968/16mins
Zbigniew Preisner — Preisner’s Music (1995). The concert recorded 130 metres below ground in the church of Wieliczka, Poland, excavated out of the abandoned salt mine of Cracovia. The Warsaw Symphony Orchestra & The Warsaw Chamber Chorus & Childrens’ Chorus of the Krakow Philharmonic.
“I don’t like going back and doing what I’ve already done, but I had to know whether my music ‘sounded’ as good without a film accompanying it. Did it stand up on its own two feet when removed from its cinematic context? To check this, I chose the Wieliczka salt mine, near Krakow: a secret, mysterious magical place 130 metres below ground. A unique atmosphere with exceptional acoustics. The risk was great though: a subterranean symphony orchestra connected by 400 metres of cables to technical equipment on the ground above.
Anything could have happened. Yet it all went incredibly well. I separated the music into five parts, which I chose in line with my tastes and instincts and which combined into a single ‘suite’. I wanted to produce more than just a concert; I wanted to put on a musical show. The concert was indeed a rite, a ‘mysterium’. My audience and I felt that my music lived its own life, albeit entirely at my command. Far from the studios and the mixing rooms, I rediscovered the soul of the orchestra and, for the first time ever, I heard my music exactly as I imagined it. I will always remember the Wieliczka concert as a unique step forward in the pursuit of my artistic freedom.” —Zbigniew Preisner
If anyone with heart listen to this concert, will never forget it.
Zbigniew Preisner (b. 1955) is Poland’s leading film music composer and is considered to be one of the most outstanding film composers of his generation. For many years Preisner enjoyed a close collaboration with the director Krzysztof Kieslowski and his scriptwriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz. His scores for Kieslowski’s films – Dekalog, The Double Life Of Veronique, Three Colours Blue, Three Colours White and Three Colours Red – have brought him international acclaim. Preisner has scored many feature films including Hector Babenco’s At Play In The Fields Of The Lord, Louis Malle’s Damage, Luis Mandoki’s When A Man Loves A Woman, Agnieszka Holland’s The Secret Garden, Charles Sturridge’s Fairytale: A True Story, Thomas Vinterberg’s It’s All About Love, Jean Becker’s Effroyables jardins, Claude Miller’s Un Secret and Max Färberböck’s Anonyma.
Requiem for my friend, Preisner’s first large-scale work specially written for recording and live performance, is dedicated to the memory of Krzysztof Kieslowski. Originally released on Erato Disques (Warner Classics) in October 1998 the work received its world premiere at the Teatr Wielki, Warsaw, on the 1st October 1998. The album has recently been rereleased on CD and vinyl by Sony Poland. Preisner’s second large-scale work is Silence, Night and Dreams, for orchestra, choir and soloists, based on texts from the Book of Job. The recording features the voice of Teresa Salgueiro (from Madredeus) and was released worldwide on EMI Classics in 2007. The world premiere of the work took place on 4th September 2007 in the Herodion Theatre on the Acropolis in Athens.
Other CD releases include 10 Easy Pieces for Piano, Moje Koledy, Preisner’s Voices and Danse Macabre. In 2005, Preisner was commissioned by David Gilmour to arrange nine of songs on his album On An Island for a 40-piece string orchestra. The album was released worldwide in 2006 and Preisner conducted the string section of the Polish Baltic Philharmonic Orchestra in these arrangements at the last concert on Gilmour’s 2006 tour, at the shipyards in Gdansk, Poland. A live recording and film were made of the event and versions of these have been released in several formats and packages under the title Live In Gdansk. Preisner records and mixes all his film scores and albums at his own studio in Niepolomice, Poland. Recent productions include Earthshine, the second album by the post-rock band Tides From Nebula and two albums by the jazz pianist Leszek Mozdzer, Time and Between Us And The Light.
Among many awards and citations Preisner received the Silver Bear from the Berlin Film Festival in 1997, two Césars from the French Film Academy – one in 1996 for Jean Becker’s Elisa, and one in 1995 for Three Colours Red – and three consecutive citations as the year’s most outstanding composer of film music in The Los Angeles Critics Association Awards of 1991,1992 and 1993. Preisner is a member of the French Film Academy and in 1992 he received the Award of the Minister of Foreign Affairs for outstanding achievements in the presentation of Polish Culture abroad. In October 2008 he was honoured by the International Eurasia Film Festival with an award for his contribution to Cinema and Arts.
Previously on Cinephilia and Beyond:
Many years ago, Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog changed my stupid little life. The series is Kieślowski’s most acclaimed work, possibly “the best dramatic work ever done specifically for television” and has won numerous international awards, though it was not widely released outside Europe until the late 1990s. In his book Eyes Wide Open, Frederick Raphael reported that, while discussing Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick said the Dekalog was the best thing he’d seen in years… and he wished he had made it himself.
Source: preisner.com
Krzysztof Kieślowski - Cinema Lesson in Three Colors: Blue
In case you missed it, don’t miss it now – Krzysztof Kieslowski: I’m So-So… (1998) is.gd/GEH7kF #filmmaking
— LaFamiliaFilm (@LaFamiliaFilm) November 6, 2012
“My part of the work is to make the film. Your part is to find something in the film, or perhaps not. For me it’s always important to hear viewers’ interpretations. They turn out to be very different to my intentions. I don’t hide my intentions. I speak about them – but not about my interpretations.”
Krzysztof Kieślowski (June 27, 1941 — March 13, 1996)
On March 13, 1996, the self-effacing Polish film maker, Krzysztof Kieslowski, died of heart failure in a Warsaw hospital. The film world mourned, especially when it was revealed that Kieslowski, who had been retired since the completion of Red in 1994, was contemplating a return to work with a new trilogy of films about heaven, hell, and limbo. What we are left with in the wake of the director’s passing, however is an extraordinary résumé that includes such memorable features as Camera Buff, Decalogue, The Double Life of Veronique, and the Three Colors trilogy (Blue, White, Red). Less than a year before his death, Kieslowski agreed to be the subject of a short documentary by his long-time assistant, Krzysztof Wierzbicki. The hour long film, which was made for Danish television, featured Kieslowski’s recollections of his life and movies, along with several candid shots of the director relaxing and enjoying his retirement. What was initially intended as a fairly inconsequential interview unwittingly turned into a remarkable tribute.
Does I’m So-So offer any new insights into the director’s psyche? It does, even for those who have poured over his autobiography, Kieslowski on Kieslowski. During the course of one hour, there’s hardly any topic that goes untouched by Kieslowski, which speaks highly not only of the subject of the film, but of the interviewer, Wierzbicki. Kieslowski has always shunned the spotlight (preferring to “sit in a dark room and smoke”), so it’s a credit to this film’s director that he was able to present such a candid and moving portrait. Kieslowski confesses that because he knows Wierzbicki (as well several other men in the crew), “We can discuss… meaningful and personal topics.” He goes on to talk about, in some detail, his philosophy of documentary film making. After saying that he made documentaries — movies about “people who lead real lives” — to describe the world that we live in, Kieslowski goes on to reveal a series of stringent guidelines that he followed. For example, he believes that everyone is entitled to their privacy and certain things should not be photographed for the screen. “Can you film a real death and use it as a documentary?” he asks. It’s meant to be a redundant question.
Admitting that he turned the camera on himself in every picture that he made (like the protagonist in Camera Buff at the movie’s end), Kieslowski never saw himself as anything more than a film director with a bleak view of the world. “I have only one good characteristic. I’m a pessimist… The future is a black hole.” He also doesn’t claim to have the answers to the questions posed by his films, saying that “Knowing is not my business, not knowing is.” And he indicates that he believes all interpretations of his films to be valid, stating that he made movies so that everyone could take something different from them. I’m So-So presents a broad overview of Kieslowski’s career, zeroing in on a few select films for more in-depth discussion. These are: 1980’s Talking Heads (“an experiment”), 1976’s The Calm, 1979’s Camera Buff (“the film shows the camera’s power”), 1981’s Blind Chance, 1988’s Decalogue (“we wanted to brush up those 10 well- written sentences”), and 1994’s Red. At one point, Kieslowski also reveals that he once met an Italian man who had experienced something very similar to the story presented in The Double Life of Veronique.
The title comes from Kieslowski’s belief that people should not lie about how they’re feeling just for the sake of polite conversation. As a result, when someone asks him how he’s doing, instead of replying “Well” or “Very well”, he says “I’m so-so.” In truth, however, there’s nothing “so-so” about this particular motion picture. Krzysztof Kieslowski: I’m So-So is a striking picture of an extraordinary man who made some of the most powerful films of the last two decades. This movie will live alongside the director’s body of work as an important and informative companion piece. © 1997 James Berardinelli
In case you missed it, don’t miss it now – Krzysztof Kieslowski: I’m So-So… (1998) is.gd/GEH7kF #filmmaking
— LaFamiliaFilm (@LaFamiliaFilm) November 6, 2012
Source: sgtr.wordpress.com
“I think that a film really only comes into existence in the cutting-room. To shoot is only to collect material, create possibilities. I try to go about it in such a way as to ensure myself as much freedom to maneuver as possible. Of course, editing means sticking two pieces of film together and, on this level, there are a number of principles and rules which you have to follow and sometimes break. But there’s another level to editing and it’s the most interesting one. That is the level of constructing a film. It’s a game with the audience, a way of directing attention, distributing tension. Some directors believe that all these elements are written down in the script. Others believe in the actors, the staging, lights, photography. I believe in that, too, but I also know that the elusive spirit of a film, so difficult to describe, is born only there, in the cutting-room.” — Krzysztof Kieślowski
On March 13, 1996, the self-effacing Polish film maker, Krzysztof Kieslowski, died of heart failure in a Warsaw hospital. The film world mourned, especially when it was revealed that Kieslowski, who had been retired since the completion of Red in 1994, was contemplating a return to work with a new trilogy of films about heaven, hell, and limbo. What we are left with in the wake of the director’s passing, however is an extraordinary résumé that includes such memorable features as Camera Buff, Decalogue, The Double Life of Veronique, and the Three Colors trilogy (Blue, White, Red). Less than a year before his death, Kieslowski agreed to be the subject of a short documentary by his long-time assistant, Krzysztof Wierzbicki. The hour long film, which was made for Danish television, featured Kieslowski’s recollections of his life and movies, along with several candid shots of the director relaxing and enjoying his retirement. What was initially intended as a fairly inconsequential interview unwittingly turned into a remarkable tribute.
Does I’m So-So offer any new insights into the director’s psyche? It does, even for those who have poured over his autobiography, Kieslowski on Kieslowski. During the course of one hour, there’s hardly any topic that goes untouched by Kieslowski, which speaks highly not only of the subject of the film, but of the interviewer, Wierzbicki. Kieslowski has always shunned the spotlight (preferring to “sit in a dark room and smoke”), so it’s a credit to this film’s director that he was able to present such a candid and moving portrait.
Kieslowski confesses that because he knows Wierzbicki (as well several other men in the crew), “We can discuss… meaningful and personal topics.” He goes on to talk about, in some detail, his philosophy of documentary film making. After saying that he made documentaries — movies about “people who lead real lives” — to describe the world that we live in, Kieslowski goes on to reveal a series of stringent guidelines that he followed. For example, he believes that everyone is entitled to their privacy and certain things should not be photographed for the screen. “Can you film a real death and use it as a documentary?” he asks. It’s meant to be a redundant question.
Admitting that he turned the camera on himself in every picture that he made (like the protagonist in Camera Buff at the movie’s end), Kieslowski never saw himself as anything more than a film director with a bleak view of the world. “I have only one good characteristic. I’m a pessimist… The future is a black hole.” He also doesn’t claim to have the answers to the questions posed by his films, saying that “Knowing is not my business, not knowing is.” And he indicates that he believes all interpretations of his films to be valid, stating that he made movies so that everyone could take something different from them.
I’m So-So presents a broad overview of Kieslowski’s career, zeroing in on a few select films for more in-depth discussion. These are: 1980’s Talking Heads (“an experiment”), 1976’s The Calm, 1979’s Camera Buff (“the film shows the camera’s power”), 1981’s Blind Chance, 1988’s Decalogue (“we wanted to brush up those 10 well- written sentences”), and 1994’s Red. At one point, Kieslowski also reveals that he once met an Italian man who had experienced something very similar to the story presented in The Double Life of Veronique.
The title comes from Kieslowski’s belief that people should not lie about how they’re feeling just for the sake of polite conversation. As a result, when someone asks him how he’s doing, instead of replying “Well” or “Very well”, he says “I’m so-so.” In truth, however, there’s nothing “so-so” about this particular motion picture. Krzysztof Kieslowski: I’m So-So is a striking picture of an extraordinary man who made some of the most powerful films of the last two decades. This movie will live alongside the director’s body of work as an important and informative companion piece.
