The Face of Time - POV - Aarhus Universitet

76 p.o.v. number 13 March 2002
another student short fiction, The Tram (Tramwaj, 1966). Most of his
early films in the 60s and 70s were short documentary films with a
strong, though often subdued, political critique and satire. Nevertheless,
many of them were banned by the communist regime. Films
like The Photograph (Zdjecie, 1968), From the City of Lodz (Z miasta
Lodzi, 1969) – his graduation film from the Lodz Film school – I was
a Soldier (Bylem Zolnierzem, 1970), Factory (Fabryka, 1970), Refrain
(Refren, 1972), and perhaps his most well–known one, From a Night
Porter’s Point of View (Z punktu widzenia nocnego portiera, 1978),
were all short, insightful, often subdued satirical or lyrical portraits
of everyday life in Poland.
But Kieslowski also made longer documentaries such as Workers
’71 (Robotnicy ‘71,1972), in which Kieslowski tries to portray the
mentality of the working class at the time of the strikes and rebellion
against Gomulka; the drama-documentary experiment Curriculum
Vitae (Zyciorys, 1975), where a real party committee interrogates an
actor in a fictional story; or I don’t know (Nie wiem, 1977), with its
confessions of a former factory manager. These films are very direct
visual snapshots of reality in a Communist society, and often with a
sharp political edge.
Even in his first feature films such as Scar (Blizna, 1976), about
industrial disasters in the name of social welfare and development,
or Camera Buff (Amator, 1979), a satire on political censorship in
Poland, Kieslowski continues a clear political agenda, but again
often with extensive use of visual symbolism and a very nonutopian
political ideology. He is more interested in the ways in
which contradictions always seem to appear, no matter what kind of
system we talk about. The fall of the wall and the end of
communism did not inspire a more positive outlook on life in