Since his death in 1996, Krzysztof Kieslowski has remained the best-known contemporary Polish filmmaker, and one of the most popular and respected European directors. In The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski: Variations on Destiny and Chance Marek Haltof provides a comprehensive study of Kieslowski's cinema, from his early documentaries and student films to television projects and award-winning features. The book discusses industrial practises and the context of Polish cinema from the late 1960s as well as wider European film-making, and stresses that the director is more than merely a 'great East Central European auteur', his films being as unique to Poland as elsewhere. Coverage includes discussion of The Double Life of Veronique, Decalogue and the Three Colours trilogy – Blue, White and Red.

Marek Haltof is Associate Professor at Northern Michigan University in Marquette. He is the author of several books in English and Polish, including Peter Weir: When Cultures Collide (1996) and Polish National Cinema (2002).

2004
208 pages
978-1–903364–91–8    £16.99 (pbk)
978-1–903364–92–5    £45.00 (hbk)

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chapter sample
Preface


reviews
'The most comprehensive review of Kieslowski's career that will no doubt become the primary book for anyone interested in his films. Thoroughly researched, meticulously documented and fluently written … through extensive coverage of his body of work, Haltof is able to trace Kieslowski's artistic evolution in new ways and with compelling arguments.'
Tomasz Warchol, Georgia Southern University

'An extremely efficient, solid and reliable survey. Its major contribution is to broaden awareness of the relationship between his work and the Polish cinematic context, and to acquaint readers with a range of Polish critical responses to Kieslowski's oeuvre.'
Paul Coates, University of Aberdeen

‘Immerses Kieslowski in Polish contexts, cinematic and otherwise, evaluating each film through a uniquely thorough familiarity with Polish and eastern European cinema. Haltof works through an enormous amount of Polish film criticism, all of which will be new and interesting to most English-speaking readers. His readings of the films are clear and convincing … he stakes out well-reasoned points of emphasis from which more complicated readings can begin … Highly recommended.’
Choice

‘This new study, handsomely illustrated with frame-stills, is published
as part of theWallflower Press’s impressive Directors’ Cuts series.
Haltof ’s account of the span of Kieslowski’s career is reliable, comprehensive and compelling. ...This study is undoubtedly a major contribution to our understanding of this director and his work’
Philip Cavendish, University College London

‘[This book] offers fresh and impressive new critical perspectives on Kieslowski’s film career and major film works …[it is] intimately familiar with the wide-ranging scholarship that already exists on Kieslowski …The major critical contribution made by Haltof to an understanding of Kieslowski’s films – and one that constitutes a major emphasis of his book – involves situating Kieslowski’s film career and his films within a Polish sociocultural, political and cinematic critical framework. Haltof is ideally qualified to provide such a perspective. He began his career as a bright young cineaste and film scholar/critic in his native Poland during the upheavals of the Solidarity movement of the late 1970s, its suppression during the early 1980s with the imposition of martial law, and its successful resurgence in the late 1980s. In the 1990s Haltof left his native Poland to continue his academic career in film studies in Canada and in the United States.
In his book, Haltof succeeds in placing Kieslowski’s documentary films within the context of other leading Polish documentary filmmakers of the 1960s, who were united in their efforts to overthrow the tenets of socialist realism in favour of documenting the non-idealised, unrepresented quotidian world of ordinary Poles. Haltof convincingly relates Kieslowski’s early feature films in the 1970s and early 1980s to the “Cinema of Moral Concern” (or, as Haltof prefers to call it, the “Cinema of Distrust”) in which leading Polish filmmakers unsparingly explored the dark underside of communism and explicitly denounced media manipulation, official corruption, economic failure, social disintegration, lack of personal and professional integrity, and the worn-out myths and shabby results of communist ideology and practice. While Kieslowski was actively involved in the “Cinema of Moral Concern”, Haltof demonstrates that his films made during this period avoided political schematising, caricature and thematic oversimplification in favour of critical scepticism, irony, moral complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty. In dealing with Kieslowski’s international co-productions of the 1990s, Haltof broadens his critical perspective without leaving entirely the Polish context. He offers, in fact, fascinating glimpses into the Polish critical reception of Kieslowski’s later films, which departed significantly from the more realistic, political-orientated films he had made in Poland.
‘ [The book is] extensively researched and cogently expressed …[it] should be of interest to bright cineastes with a particular interest in Kieslowski along with scholars and students engaged in the study of film, cultural studies and Slavic languages and literatures.’
Daniel Goulding, Slavic Review

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The Cinema of Andrzej Wajda: The Art of Irony and Defiance
The Cinema of Emir Kusturica: Notes from the Underground
The Red and the White: The Cinema of People's Poland
The Czechoslovak New Wave
Crossing New Europe: Postmodern Travel and the European Road Movie
The Cinema of Central Europe
The Cinema of the Balkans
The Cinema of Ken Loach: Art in the Service of the People
The Cinema of Wim Wenders: The Celluloid Highway
The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow: Hollywood Transgressor
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The Cinema of George A. Romero: Knight of the Living Dead
The Cinema of Terrence Malick: Poetic Visions of America
The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions
The Cinema of Nanni Moretti: Dreams and Diaries
The Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of the Real
The Cinema of John Carpenter: The Technique of Terror
The Cinema of Roman Polanski: Dark Spaces of the World
The Cinema of Todd Haynes: All That Heaven Allows
The Cinema of Steven Spielberg: Empire of Light