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Tim Cawkwell

~ currently publishing my poetry and verse. Blog entries on film and painting going back to 2014. My main website is www.timcawkwell.co.uk

Tim Cawkwell

Tag Archives: Karabasz

‘KIEŚLOWSKI BEFORE KIEŚLOWSKI: THE MAKING OF A METAPHYSICAL FILM-MAKER’

19 Friday Feb 2016

Posted by Tim Cawkwell in documentaries, Kieslowski reflection, metaphysical film

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Karabasz, Kieslowski, metaphysics, Poland, Solidarity

The Office 1 KK       The Office 3 KK

Just posted on my website a new essay under the above title, which can be downloaded as a pdf at http://bit.ly/KBKieslowski. I’ve been working on this all 2015, and posted bits of work-in-progress in this blog. Here’s a summary:

1              K’s high reputation – his influence – the label of ‘metaphysical’ – K’s God as outlined in 1993 interview – ‘metaphysical’ as getting behind physical appearances – ‘metaphysical’ because of presence of a God-like figure, e.g. in Three Colours: Red.

2              K’s work in documentaries prior to 1980 – particular circumstances illustrate a larger universe – ‘metaphysical’ as in The Metaphysical Poets of 17th-century England – TS Eliot – K’s interest in ill-health as metaphor – K’s documentaries about patients in hospitals, and Hospital about doctors.

3              K’s career as a documentarist (1967-80) – importance of Kazimierz Karabasz – contemporary Poland – K’s questioning of system – K’s humanism – The Office (1967) and Kafka.

4              K’s economy of narrative and of editing – his structuralism.

5              K and Camus’ ‘metaphysical rebellion’.

Also on the website is a KK timeline juxtaposing his career with events in Poland.

www.timcawkwell.co.uk

KIEŚLOWSKI REFLECTION: The Karabasz influence

18 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by Tim Cawkwell in Kieslowski reflections

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Annette Insdorf, Karabasz, Kieslowski, Lodz film school, Muzykanci, Sunday Musicians, The Musicians

One of Kieślowski’s mentors at Lodz film school was Kazimierz Karabasz (see ‘Kieślowski on Kieślowski’ page 40) and Annette Insdorf in ‘Double Lives, Second Chances’ writes that Kieślowski was influenced by Karabasz’s documentary Sunday Musicians of 1958. What is more when he was asked in the Sight & Sound poll of 1992 for his personal ten best films he included this on his list (see Wikipedia s.v. Karabasz). Two identical versions of the film are available on YouTube, one dated 1958 and one 1960, both under the title Muzykanci/The Musicians.

The film is nine minutes long, and begins with workers in a factory and hammering sounds. When the whistle blows to stop work, the hammering stops and the musicians gather. There is then a title reading: “This is a film about people who have given up many an evening. At one time the ‘Brassers’ were a vast army of amateur zealots. Today they are the last Mohicans.” They embark on a rehearsal, and we are given close-ups of faces and hands on instruments. The conductor has a fine Elgarian moustache.

Muzykanci 2

They rehearse and then play a piece through. When the tempo picks up, the image dissolves into the factory interior at night while the music continues on the soundtrack, fading then coming to a halt.

You can see why Kieslowski was impressed. Firstly, Karabasz’s focus on faces in close-up chiaroscuro is a style that features regularly in his documentaries (I Was a Soldier, X-Ray, for example) as a way of scrutinizing people, of letting the face speak for itself.

Muzykanci 1

The camera is an observer not a critic. Secondly, he would have liked the micro-universe that this group of musicians inhabit as a place of community (compare Hospital). The authorities no doubt felt it was good propaganda for Poland, but the tone is not prescriptive in any way. Thirdly, it even has a metaphysical touch at the end: as the image shows the darkened empty factory to close the film, the sound is of the brass band playing on, in quick tempo but diminishing slowly in volume before coming to a halt, a ghostly present as if the people have passed on but their music lingers.

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  • EMPIRE – WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
  • yearning for the sixties
  • FILM PORTRAITURE 4: Bob Fleischner Dying

Recent Comments

Sarah Cawkwell on FILM PORTRAITS 2: TACITA …
Antonioni: more De C… on Antonioni’s Metaphysical…
Tim Cawkwell on Ferrara made me (1): Anto…
Donato Totaro on Ferrara made me (1): Anto…
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Categories

  • Antonioni
  • artists' film
  • avant garde
  • Bible on film
  • biopics
  • Brakhage
  • Bresson
  • British cinema
  • cinema and culture
  • cinema of hyperbole
  • costume narratives
  • courtroom dramas
  • Creation
  • crucifixion films
  • crucifixion on film
  • diary films
  • disaster movies
  • documentaries
  • Doubt
  • film noir
  • film portraiture
  • gangster films
  • God
  • Hitchcock
  • humanism
  • Ireland
  • Italian gardens
  • Italy
  • John Ford
  • Kieslowski reflection
  • Kieslowski reflections
  • literature and film
  • metaphysical film
  • monastery films
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  • nuns on film
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  • Pasolini
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  • silent cinema
  • spiritual cinema
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