"The Decalogue" by Krzysztof Kieślowski

March 1 to 7, 2007

At the time of his death in 1996, the agnostic metaphysician Krzysztof Kieślowski was considered to be one of the most important directors in Europe. Despite the fact that he had been making films since 1966 and had long been recognised as a leading figure in Polish documentary, Kieślowski's global breakthrough didn't come until he made The Decalogue for Polish television in the late 1980s.
 
The two films from the series which were theatrically released – A Short Film About Killing and A Short Film About Love – triggered a veritable Kie?lowski boom in Western art house cinemas.
 
The ten films on the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament constitute the key to the director's works. Earlier topics and characters crop up again here; Kieślowski's entire Polish oeuvre, and his contribution to the "Cinema of Moral Anxiety" appear here in condensed form (including some elements of his fascinating documentary methods from the 1970s).
 
One can also already see his first steps towards the art cinema which he was to realize in France from 1991 on: his calligraphic late style which was influenced by video art and music videos.
 
The works of the Decalogue take the Biblical Commandments only as a rough starting point. The stories are almost all set in Warsaw's Ursynow high-rise complex and are all written by Kieślowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz.
 
The individual episodes are not connected to each other, which is why Kieślowski hired different actors and cinematographers for each of the films. If one follows the entire series, however, one notices that the various figures do tend to cross paths here and there, and that there is one character who everybody encounters: the angel of fate.
 
This season is being organised with the support of the Polish Institute in Vienna.