ABSTRACT
In the mid 1970s, Kieslowski turns gradually to making feature films which bear the influence of his documentary work, and it is only in the 1980s that fictional and visual narrative dominate his work. The image, and its betrayal of reality, its emptying out of living presence, is the central ethical issue of Kieslowski's film-making. In a single gesture, Kieslowski illustrates the concrete reality of post-Communist Poland, the falling of its imposed idols and the interdiction on representation which will be the subject of this film. Vincent Amiel has linked Kieslowski's filmmaking to Deleuze's concept of 'l'image-cristal'. Kieslowski's filmmaking is at its most stylized and he comes to achieve, in perhaps equal proportions, the alienation and seduction of his viewers. Kieslowski uses the film form to dramatize and view the footsteps which echo in both memory and imagination; the film's narrative strands become so many passages which might be taken.
