Sunday: I’ve arranged a meeting with friends in front of a good hotel in Paris. I am waiting, [it is] morning. The biggest, newest black BMW with an Italian license plate arrives. Inside—an elegant, greyish man. He leans over smiling: are you Italian? I answer with a negative nod of the head and see that I’ve really upset him. I feel sorry, but at the same time, glad: he’s taken me for an Italian! French? He continues to ask and gets worried that I’m not even French. He switches to English, and because he speaks that language worse than me, I have a nice, and nasty, sense of advantage. A tourist? I confirm it. He tells me a story: he is a fashion designer and today he has just finished his show in Paris. He shows folders. Nice. During the closing, his wallet was stolen with money, credit cards; fortunately he kept his passport separately; he also shows his Italian passport. He thought I was a compatriot, and now.… And again a worried, doggy, congenial face. I ask what it’s about. About money; he has to have some money to get back to Rome, to stay overnight somewhere on the way, to eat something. How much? A lot. More or less as much as what I have. He apologizes that he’s intruded, and I feel so good! I am in a way proud that he’s addressed me for help, that he’s chosen me. I take my wallet out. He gives me his business card, he will pay me the money back and we’ll drink wine in Rome, whenever I come there! And he takes out a huge, plastic bag. This is a present for you. Inside: a few leather jackets, these are his designs, whatever is left from the show. I don’t want the jackets, I don’t look at them, but he definitely has to give me a present. If I don’t take [it], he will be offended and he already wants to give me the money back. This is worth a lot more, more than a thousand dollars, he says; it’s only a present for you being so good! I feel even better. He pushes the bag on me, and leaves. For the whole day I don’t have time, but in the evening I open the bag. The jackets are made of hideous, tawdry artificial leather. Still trustingly, I check his business card: the street in which he lives does not even exist in Rome! I hang the jacket up on a hanger, the seam comes apart.
Tuesday: Bad news this morning. A few months ago, my friend’s mother was murdered.1 He found her in [her] apartment tied up with a very crafty knot; she was dead. My friend is a lawyer. He acted in the trial of the priest Popiełuszko’s murderers, milicja officers [trans: “milicja” is the name for the police of the People’s Republic; in post-communist Poland “milicja” became “policja”].2 He was these officers’ private prosecutor. That’s precisely the knot they used to tie the priest before they drowned him. Yesterday, he had his car broken into. A few days ago, his apartment. Dangerous.
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Thursday: Morning, 6 am at the airport in America in Los Angeles. A taxi-driver already warns me, seeing numerous people in front of the airport building: a bomb. Indeed, there have been phone calls, they’ve planted a bomb. The police are throwing everyone out: travellers and staff, even chefs from the airport restaurant. Probably two thousand people. Hot. There is nowhere to go, there is only a building surrounded by the police, and the highway on which they’ve stopped traffic. We crowd up in bedlam; it’s getting hotter. Everything that should be happening is: children are crying, somebody is singing, someone is fainting in the squeeze, and so on. But after an hour, I notice that a strange movement persists among people, or more like a displacement, squeezing through with bundles, step by step. At first it’s difficult to understand it, and then it becomes clear. After an hour of that movement the crowd has divided itself: Whites separate, Blacks separate, Chinese, Japanese, and other Asians separate, Mexicans separate. Everyone is standing in harmony, crowded together, but now segregated. Nobody could have planned that, but that’s how it’s happened. I wonder if I have also moved. Yes. I’ve moved two meters, because next to me a Mexican child’s been screaming. I have moved towards people speaking French; they are probably from Europe.
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Thursday: Really, why did I think about censorship yesterday? It’s the two conversations I’ve had in the last few days with the most prominent Polish directors, those who also work domestically. Wajda heavily involved himself in politics for at least two years; he’s been a Senator for a year. I’ve never hidden that I consider it absurd wasting such talent as Wajda’s on politics. He says that he wants to do something for Poland, for the new Poland. I’ve told him that the only truly good thing that he can do is a good film, because he knows how. Recently, he’s announced that he won’t be running in the next election. I met him, he was sad. What will I be doing? he asked. Films, I answered. What about? He looked at me in such a way that I understood he really didn’t know. Two days ago, I met Zanussi. He’d finished shooting. When asked how it went, he shook his head in displeasure. I’ve shot something similar to what Wajda did a few days ago. Do you know what they want? Who? I asked. He pointed with his head there, outside. They, people.
Thursday: It has occurred to me that since I’ve mentioned censorship, it would be good to say how it used to work. I’ve had, just like my colleagues, a heap of adventures with censorship. Some of my films were not screened for years, others never. Frequently, I cut something out thinking that the change was not destroying the film; frequently, I refused. In 1976 I made the feature film The Calm for television. I liked that film, it had a few good scenes, and a thought—that a man couldn’t achieve peace even if it meant only home, wife, television—was near to me. The protagonist is a guy who comes out of prison. Once free, he works at a small building site. They bring prisoners there to help. Television objected to that scene. The [television] vice-president was a very intelligent and cunning man. He called me into his office. I knew why. When I approached the building, I noticed that prisoners were working on the railway tracks. They were dressed normally, in prison clothes, around them guards with rifles. I entered the vice-president’s office. He said he liked The Calm a lot and voiced a truly astute review of that film. Really, he understood everything. He truly liked the film. I was nicely tickled and waited for what was to follow; I knew I hadn’t been called in to listen to compliments. Of course. The vice-president with regret informed me that he had to demand the deletion of a few scenes from the film. He believed it would not hurt. On the contrary, the film would be more nimble. Among the scenes for deletion he included also the one with the building site with prisoners. I asked why there could be no scene in which prisoners work on a building site. Because in Poland, said the vice-president, prisoners don’t work outside prison. The convention forbids it.… He mentioned the name of an international convention. I asked him to come to the window. He did. I asked him what he saw. He said, tramway tracks. And on the tracks? Who is working there? He looked more closely. Prisoners, he said calmly, they’re here every day. So, prisoners in Poland work outside prison, I noted. Of course, he said, that’s why you have to delete that scene.
That’s more or less what those conversations looked like. That one was quite pleasant. I deleted the scene with prisoners and a few more, and the film still would not be shown for four years. When it was shown, it had already become a historical film. In Poland a lot changes fast.
Tuesday: Fourteen years have passed since the conversation with the vice-president. Yesterday I passed through a small town. I slowed down, because the road was being repaved. Like in a bad script, those who were repaving were dressed in prison clothes. Guards with rifles stood next to them. Today I can make a film about it. That’s it on censorship, which doesn’t exist anymore. And also on how much and how fast things change.
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Krzysztof Kieślowski: Interviews
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