Chapter 2 The first part of personal background Early short film (6～10)

In December 1998, the New York Museum of Modern Art held a large-scale retrospective exhibition to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Lords Film Academy. Joshua Siegel, deputy director of the Department of Film and Video Works, wrote a detailed introduction Text: "From 1772 to 1795, Poland... was divided several times by Russia, Germany, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the next 123 years, when the three holy empires were at war with each other, Poland was also removed from the map of Europe. Disappeared. Even after Germany and Austria-Hungary signed the "Versailles Peace Treaty" in 1919 and restored Poland's independent state status, hostile neighbors and a weak domestic economy still hindered the country's development. In 1939, Hitler's rule Germany and the Soviet Union under the leadership of Stalin concluded the "Mutual Non-Aggression Pact" and wantonly divided Poland and the Baltic countries. After experiencing the plunder of the Soviets, Poland ushered in the aggression of Nazi Germany."

After World War II, the political atmosphere in Poland was highly tense.As Stalin himself said, importing communism into Poland was like throwing ducks off the shelves.Because they fought side by side with the Red Army against the Nazis before, many Poles opened their arms to the Soviet Communist Party, but some people strongly resisted it.In fact, the main force of the Polish Resistance Army in World War II came from the Polish National Army (Armia Krajowa), who were anti-Nazi and anti-communist (and anti-Semitic at the same time).Siegel cites British historian Norman Davies' Heart of Europe: A Brief History of Poland:

At this time, Poland became a Stalinist one-party dictatorship. By 1946, more than 90% of the GNP was owned by the state. The land reform that swept across the country also broke the social structure of pre-war Poland.Heavy industry has been given priority over agriculture, privatization has been abolished, workers have been exploited, and people's living standards have declined... Anyone suspected of treason will be interrogated, investigated, or thrown directly into prison.Although the atmosphere of terror in Poland was not as serious as that of the Czech Republic or Hungary at that time, and collective ownership had not yet been implemented in the countryside, Stalinism, which unified Poland, was still a combination of brutality and compromise.

The Lodz Film Academy was founded with funding from the newly created Polish Film Board, a state-owned unit under the Polish Ministry of Culture and Arts, and was originally intended to serve Stalinism, but it eventually became a free institution.In the face of various political pressures, the academy still insists on continuous development, and the harsh censorship system has brought them unexpected benefits; when it is difficult to express true ideas directly, satire, deceit, and metaphors have become powerful tools. After Stalin's death in 1953, the Lodz Film Academy under the leadership of Jerzy Toeplitz abandoned the path of socialist realism for social realism.Students graduating from Lodz are helped by a new national system called Zespoly, semi-autonomous institutions that offer them some creative freedom.Although works are still subject to censorship by government departments, scripts and films must be submitted for approval, but most of the "working groups" are composed of people like Wajda (X Film Studio) and Zanussi (TOR Film Studio). Excellent directors act as leaders, which has brought certain guarantees to the creative freedom of other filmmakers, and this film production system has continued to the present Poland.

On July 17, 1997, a seminar on Kieslowski's work was held at the Image Archive in Paris, and the French film critic Michel Ciment proposed a short review of various periods of Polish cinema.If the first wave of new Polish cinema in the 1950s included Wajda, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Wojciech Haas, and Andrzej Munk - that's is a group of directors who "talk to history" but are not lacking in romanticism-the second wave in the early 1960s mainly included the words of Polanski and Jerzy Skolimowski, so the third wave The second wave was set off by Zanussi and Kieslowski, which was "a return to everyday life and pessimism".

In 1966, Kieslowski made his first two student short films, both of which were about 6 minutes long and shot on 35mm black and white film.In these two works, we can already see his two major development directions in the future. Urzad (The Office) is a satirical documentary about bureaucracy.The location is the offices of a state-owned insurance company, and we can hear the conversations of the office workers, but their lips seem to barely move, a detail that heightens the inhumanity of the office.The focus of the short film revolves around a discussion of which rubber stamp to use on a form.An old woman handed in the application, and the clerk claimed it had nothing to do with the office.Bookshelves are stacked with papers, tea is being made, and we hear a female voice repeating, telling someone to "write down what you've done in your life".

Tramwaj, on the other hand, is a fictional short film in which a Kieslowskiian romance and voyeurism intertwine.The young man ran and jumped onto the tram, and found a beautiful girl in the car.The cold wind blew in from the car door, he closed the door, she looked at him and smiled, then fell asleep.He got off at the station and watched the tram and the Sleeping Beauty in the car go away.Suddenly, he ran after the tram again.This lost young man can be seen as a prototype for the voyeur Tomek in "A Short Film About Love". Tram is executive produced by Professor Wanda Jakubowska, who made the film about Auschwitz — and on location at Auschwitz — twenty years ago. The first feature film, she was also a political prisoner there.The film, called "The Last Stop" (also known as "The Last Stage"), was shot in black-and-white film and powerfully conveyed the theme of the unity of the concentration camp female prisoners.Later, she directed another Kieslowski short film, Koncert Zyczen (1967), a 17-minute drama about an outsider in love.By the lake, a group of young people are laughing and playing. In the background, loud rock music is playing from the radio of the tour bus.A young man wearing glasses secretly watched a couple in the bushes, and he stared at the girl in ecstasy.Soon, the couple left on a motorcycle, and the bus honked its horn and set off on the road.Just as the motorcycle overtook the bus, the girl in the back seat dropped her backpack.The young men on the bus picked up their backpacks but would not return them unless the girl got on the bus and followed them.She seemed tempted, ready to do so.In the end, everything calmed down and the girl returned to her boyfriend.The motorcycle gradually disappeared from sight, leaving only the boy with glasses still staring at the girl obsessively.

Although Kieslowski's early works were shot with great care, it is difficult for people to see his future achievements.He finally grows into an artist through continuous learning and observation, and then he has a personal vision.The short films he made at that time were mainly documentaries, and in his graduation thesis in 1968, he raised the level of documentary creation: "Reality is so rich, so great, so incomparable, nothing repeats, no shot can Again, we don't have to worry about its plot development: every day it brings us something new and extraordinary. It's not a paradox that reality is the starting point of a documentary. We just have to trust reality itself in its ability to write [6] He also lists names of people who enjoy documenting the complexities of life and see editing as a creative process, including film critic Andre Bazin and director Robert Ferrer. Lahadi (Robert Flaherty), Richard Leacock (Richard Leacock) and others.

Kazimierz Karabacz, who was also Lords' teacher, made a 10-minute documentary called "Sunday Musicians" in 1958.It must have made a big impression on Kieslowski: When he was asked to list his top 10 films in 1994, The Sunday Musicians was the only one that wasn't as well known. known names. (The other nine films he picked were [in no particular order]: Fellini's "La Strada," Ken Loach's "The Kid and the Eagle," Bresson's "Death Row" "[A Man Escaped], Bo Widerberg's "The Pram", Ivan Passer's "Intimate Lighting", Tarkov Tarkovsky's "Ivan's Childhood" [Ivan's Childhood], Truffaut's "The 400 Blows" [The 400 Blows], Wells' "Citizen Kane" and Chaplin's "Looking for a Child" The Kid. However, his list for the British magazine Sight and Sound featured Tony Richardson's Loneliness of the Long-distance Runner. Long Distance Runner] replaced Four Hundred Strikes.)

"Sunday Musicians" records how more than 20 old workers performed music under the leadership of an old conductor.After a series of unbearable noises, they finally played a piece in full. "Few short films have shown so much, and in such a beautiful, simple way, that it expresses the need to create something that is deeply connected to humanity itself." Kieslowski in 1994 writes, “Because, in addition to meeting our basic needs—survival, breakfast, lunch, supper, sleep—we all crave something that will give meaning to life and elevate it.”[7] Kieslowski's early works developed along this direction, using all the poetry and poignancy of life to express the lives of ordinary people.This approach began with "Photograph" (Zdjecie, 1968), in which he searched for two grown-up men who had been photographed together as children.If the American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Wisdom is to find miracles in the ordinary", then Kieslowski has grown into a wise filmmaker at this time.Heartbroken at the disparity with which the daily lives of most ordinary Poles differed from the false image on screen, Kieslowski quietly turned his curious camera to A real and desolate world.

But political forces are always hovering overhead.As Siegel noted in a pamphlet for MoMA: Gomulka came under pressure from nationalist, anti-Semitic and anti-intellectual forces within the Communist party.General Mieczlav Mochar, the head of the Security Forces and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, commanded the main force, and his propaganda machine claimed that the Jews were part of an imperialist Soviet (and sometimes West German) plot to overthrow Poland.They cite the Second Middle East War, which began in 1967, the "Prague Spring" events of 1968, and student demonstrations on university campuses across Poland as evidence of the existence of this Zionist fifth column.In fact, it was the government itself that was inciting student demonstrations with the aim of pitting the media, workers and intellectuals against each other.Like many demonstrators at the time, Kieslowski realized it only after the damage had been done. He himself admitted in an interview: The louder the yelling at the government, the more stones were thrown, the more people were kicked out of the country... We were taken advantage of.I realized that I could never have anything to do with politics because politics deceived students.It was an important time for me and my generation, and some of my friends and their parents were exiled, and it was a horrible experience to see their empty houses.We helped them pack their luggage, and every day we went to the train station to see off a group of partners, and the train left for Vienna.We will say goodbye with a song: Peace!Peace!Bolsheviks, you will rot in the port, and I will keep in touch with the Jews. [8] The purge of anti-Semites and anti-intellectuals is carried out not only in university campuses and scientific research centers, but also in cultural circles.Toplitz was forced to resign as director of the Lodz Film School (he served as headmaster at the newly established Australian School of Film, Television and Broadcasting), and Toplitz's predecessor, who had pioneered the Polish Army during World War II. Aleksander Ford of the film "The Task Force" was also expelled from the party and exiled abroad.Two-thirds of Polish Jews were forced to emigrate.As Slawomir Iziak explained to me: "In Poland, everyone knows that the film school is a paradise, certainly not a communist paradise. So, probably for this reason, in 1968, its first An attack by the Communist Party's anti-Semitic propaganda campaign, it was seen as a den of reaction. The college lost many teachers and students." The purges of 1968, followed by strikes in 1970 (to protest food shortages and prices It was against this background that Kieslowski’s pessimism was formed.It was also at this time that Gomulka stepped down and was replaced by Eduard Galek, who became Poland's leader until 1980, when the Solidarity movement emerged.As Kieslowski said in an interview: "Being a Pole ... means that every generation has a hope, but in the end, they will be deceived and their hope will be lost. And, we have from the beginning Knowing that, knowing how things will end up like this. We have hope, but in the end reality always knocks us down." [9]