VI
Young man Tomek (Olaf Lubaszenko) spends his evenings spying through a telescope on Magda (Grażyna Szapołowska), a woman in her thirties who lives in an apartment opposite his. He begins to fall in love with her. As Magda becomes aware of Tomek’s obsession, she tries to prove to him the true nature of love. This episode was expanded into the feature-length film A Short Film About Love.
VII
As a 16-year-old, Majka (Maja Barełkowska) became pregnant by teacher Wojtek (Bogusław Linda). Their daughter Ania was adopted by Majka’s mother (Anna Polony) to avoid scandal. Now 22-years-old, Majka decides that she wants to be the legal mother of Ania. She abducts the 6-year-old girl, stirring difficult emotions in all involved.
Dekalog has achieved that rare feat of being a foreign-language feature that is internationally popular, not only with film critics, but also with the viewing public. How exactly did this 10-part cycle, originally made for television in communist Poland and loosely based around the Ten Commandments, find such success? The answer lies in Krzysztof Kieślowski’s ability to transplant broader moral dilemmas into the everyday lives of its characters, to dramatise rather than dictate reality, to find the universal resonance in seemingly local issues – and to do all of this with a strikingly mature aesthetic, hitherto unseen on most television sets.
Films will be available via ICA Cinema 3 between 19 May - 26 May.
