The Cinematheque

Krzysztof Kieślowski’s filmmaking began in the short documentary format, a cost-effective way to make films that, in Poland, would screen before features in cinemas. Over nearly the entire span of his career, Kieślowski returned to this mode to increasingly structure everyday life into the cycles and patterns that would come to dominate his fictional dramas of chance and fate. Kieślowski’s approach can be gentle, as in his portrait of Łódź, his temporary home while in film school, or in his direct cinema-inflected Talking Heads, his most widely praised documentary. His scenes of bureaucracy (Office, Refrain) and his interest in social groupings (Seven Women of Different Ages, Seven Days a Week) allow his management of tone to range from cold analysis to the quasi-mystical cataloguing of heightened details. These rarely screened works offer an important access point to Kieślowski’s art.

Office
Urząd
Poland 1966
Krzysztof Kieślowski
6 min. DCP In Polish with English subtitles

From the City of Lodz
Z miasta Łodzi
Poland 1969
Krzysztof Kieślowski
18 min. DCP In Polish with English subtitles

Refrain
Refren
Poland 1972
Krzysztof Kieślowski
11 min. DCP In Polish with English subtitles

Seven Women of Different Ages
Siedem kobiet w różnym wieku
Poland 1979
Krzysztof Kieślowski
16 min. DCP In Polish with English subtitles

Talking Heads
Gadające głowy
Poland 1980
Krzysztof Kieślowski
15 min. DCP In Polish with English subtitles

Seven Days a Week
Siedem dni w tygodniu
Poland/​Netherlands 1990
Krzysztof Kieślowski
21 min. DCP In Polish with English subtitles