Krzysztof Kieslowski by Renata Bernard Steven Woodward(retail)

Author:Renata Bernard, Steven Woodward(retail)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2016-04-29T04:00:00+00:00

Diary: 1989–1990 (3)

Krzysztof Kieślowski / 1989–90

From Kino 2 (1992): 44. Reprinted by permission.

This is the third extract from Krzysztof Kieślowski’s diaries printed in the Zurich magazine Du and reprinted in Polish in Kino.

Saturday: I am finishing the tenth edit of La Double Vie de Véronique. A few more will still emerge. It is a remarkably difficult film. When writing the script, everything was coming together nicely for us. It is a film about sensitivity, premonitions, and difficult-to-define, irrational relations between people. You cannot show too much—it would diffuse the mystery. You cannot show too little—no one would understand anything. Searching for the balance between transparency and mystery is the reason for so many edits. I am curious myself if we will finally manage to find the right proportions. Probably, as usual, not.

Saturday: A short, quite depressing stay in Poland. On television and in the press a whole deluge of insults, slanders, and conflicts. Parties discredit their opponents with completely personal assaults. Strikes, including hunger strikes, and demonstrations are organized most often under the war-cry of destroying or at least humiliating somebody. Everyone is arguing with everyone and about everything. A pretext itself is insignificant. Is it a consequence of forty-five years of the communist system suppressing passions and emotions? I am not an optimist, but all the time I keep hoping that we didn’t need freedom only to show to each other how much we could hate one another.

Monday: Public polls have shown that Solidarity’s and the Church’s authority is failing. The case of Solidarity is entirely clear. It has power now, so whether it wants to or not, it has to make unpopular decisions. The Church issue must be considered more seriously. Its achievements cannot be overestimated. I think that we owe our existence as a nation and a state to a large extent to the Church. There’s a close relationship between the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the Polish Church’s and the Pope’s stance. Today, when communism is no more, the Church, that quiet winner, is starting to make demands. It has demanded the introduction of religious instruction in schools and religion has become, despite the initial resistance from state authorities, a school subject. Now, a quarrel has broken out about the subject of termination of pregnancies. In a country where there are hundreds of thousands of unemployed, and millions of people live on the verge of poverty, in a country with haphazard legislation in the fields of economy and law, they discuss fiercely whether abortion should be allowed or not. Currently, the parliamentarians, the press, and state authorities are busying themselves with it. Catholic activists and parliamentarians very close to Catholic circles demand a legal ban on abortion, even in the cases where pregnancy is a result of rape or incest. Even when a conceived child would come into this world abnormal or heavily impaired. They demand imprisonment for women who undergo abortion and doctors who conduct it. Catholic activists are also demanding an immediate cessation of the production and import of any contraceptives, and even a total ban on their usage.

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