Krzysztof Kieslowski - The Fright of Real Tears

Event information

Krzysztof Kieslowski – The Fright of Real Tears

"I'm frightened of real tears. In fact, I don't even know whether I've got the right to photograph them. At such times I feel like somebody who's found himself in a realm which is, in fact, out of bounds. That's the main reason why I escaped from documentaries" ( Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1994)

Fovea Film Club presents a programme of short films by Kryzysztof Kieslowski focusing on his transition from documentary to fiction.

Part 1: Documentaries (63 mins)

"Hospital" (1976, 20 mins)

This documentary, made for Polish TV, shows us 24 hours in the life of a hospital through the eyes of a group of doctors and nurses. "Hospital" is a good example of Kieslowskis' early documentary style which had a very clear aim - to show on film the reality of life in Soviet Poland which he felt was not truthfully represented by the state media. After making this film, his tenth for the Polish state network WFDiF, Kieslowski started work on his first fiction feature for the cinema, which was released later the same year .

"From the Night Porters Point of View" (1978, 16 mins)

A landmark film for Kieslowski, who had returned to making documentaries after shooting his first feature "The Scar", a fairly conventional piece of social realism which he was unhappy with. The film presents the world view of a night porter who talks to the camera freely and openly about his views which, as he continues to speak, are revealed to be increasingly extreme and brutal (he is not only in favor of the death penalty but would like to see the executions carried out in public). The film was very successful and caused an outcry in Poland - the night porter became a hate figure, being seen as a living example of everything that was wrong with the authoritarian, bureaucratic regime at that time. Kieslowski however, was shocked and disturbed by the effect that his film had on the personal life of its subject and dramatized his own discomfort with this aspect of documentary film making in his next feature for the cinema "Camera Buff" (1979).

"Railway Station" (1980, 13 mins)

The fictional premise of "Camera Buff" (in which an amateur documentary directors' film is used as evidence against one of its subjects) very nearly became a reality during the making of "Railway Station" - a meditative documentary portrait of a railway station and its users - when the police confiscated Kieslowskis' rushes as evidence in a murder trial. Although the footage turned out to be of no use to the authorities, the experience was a major factor in his decision to abandon the documentary form. Leaving all that aside, the formal structure of "Railway Station" shows the extent to which the experience of shooting two fictional feature films had changed Kieslowskis' approach to film making.

"Talking Heads" (1980, 14 mins)

Kieslowskis' last documentary and one of his best. The film is constructed through a deceptively simple formal device - the same three questions "What year were you born?", "Who are you?", "What do you most wish for?" are put to ordinary Polish people and arranged in reverse chronological order by the year of the subjects birth (so the first interview is with a one year old child and the last with a woman in her late 80's). The film achieves a near perfect balance between representing the thoughts and feelings of a group of individuals and recording their collective history.

20 min break

Part 2: Fiction (55 mins)

"Dekalog (Episode 4)" ( 1988, 55 mins)

Kieslowski made two more feature films in Poland after "Camera Buff": "Blind Chance" (1982) and "No End" (1985), neither of which received much international recognition despite their obvious quality and formal invention (at the time they were seen as too specifically Polish to appeal to an international audience, later on both films were very influential). Returning to television in 1988, Kieslowski started work on the 10 part fiction film cycle "Dekalog" which finally sealed his international reputation (two parts were later expanded into feature films). In the ten parts of "Dekalog", Kieslowski achieved a subtle and delicate balance between casual observation and psychological (or metaphysical) realism which his later European films were never able to match, despite (or because of?) their glamourous casts and lavish production values. Episode 4 traces the effect of a mysterious letter on the relationship between a father and daughter and is Kieslowskis' clearest exposition of the complex relationship between documentary evidence and truth.

Total length (including 20 min break) 2 hours and 18 mins