It’s not the first time I’ve noticed that TVR doesn’t have a science, because I guess it would, given the fact that it still has professionals, many of whom are top-notch, but the ability to promote their good works as they should. Those that, in the end, justify his existence and are the essence of his business card.

It’s been a few weeks now TVR Cultural broadcasts a retrospective of Krzysztof Kieslowski, which is not assumed or presented as such. Polish director, to whom a similar retrospective was dedicated at the 2022 edition TIFF. Thus, the Romanian audience has an unexpected opportunity to see or watch some of the best films produced in Poland in the 1980s. Solidaritywhether he is legal or not, Martial law proclaimed by General Wojciech Jaruzelski on December 13, 1981. A law whose consequences were felt as such until the end of the last communist decade.

In that Poland, films of incredible courage were created for us Romanians, films in which we openly talked about all the vices of communist society. About false values, about utopia, about lies and inequality, about deprivation, cold and hunger, about immorality as a state policy, about censorship, which were among its main descriptors. Of course, not all of these films were to the liking of the authorities, not all of them went easily. For example, the movie as author, which talked about censorship, caused the displeasure of many. IN With no end (another opportunity for criticism and controversial discussions, criticism both from the authorities and from Solidarity) asked about the communist future of the country. Which seemed undeniable at the time. And which in other parts could not be questioned. But even raising the question of the possible fall of communism was something incredible in communist Romania. And yet Kieslowski could continue to work and not elsewhere than in his country, he could film and present to the general public, among other things, his famous DECALOGUEwas also broadcast by TVR at the beginning of the first post-communist decade.

Such films as directed by Kieslowski, for example Short filmabout murder about which I intend to write in the following lines, it was impossible to imagine in communist Romania. In 1982-1983, Dan Pizza, for example, did Sand rocksthe film is incomparably more friendly than the Polish productions of Wajda or Kieslowski (cf. Christian Tudor Popescu- A silent film is moving in Romania), and with it the creation caused the wrath of the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Only a week after the premiere at the end of January 1983, the production was removed from the big screens, and in the summer of the same year The most beloved son of the people he loudly condemned “the decadence that can be seen in the minds of writers and directors.” After another proof restoration, after One hundred lei after A movie with a charming girlafter the obstacles put up by Pintilier, that the communist regime was not the same everywhere, that in Romania it has a rigid form, another confirmation of the validity of the questions about how many types of socialism there are, which the great journalist Noel Bernard had formulated in one of his editorials, spoken from the microphone Free Europe.

From the very first series, A short film about murder shock due to violence. We see a rat in the water, then a hanged cat, a little further on in a few shots a group of naked people who have proven themselves by attacking anyone who finds themselves on the street insists. Jacek Lazar (Miroslav Beka), a young man who left home because he could no longer bear the memory of the circumstances in which his only sister died five years ago, wanders the city for hours, beating up another guy he met. accidentally in a public toilet for no reason. To then kill the taxi driver Waldemar Rekowski (Jan Thesarge) with a pathological pleasure in killing. He’s not exactly a saint either. The driver likes to attack his customers, torture animals, take strange orders and has all kinds of objects in the car that indicate his inclination towards evil.

The film is short, as the title suggests, just over 80 minutes, it is a development for the big screen of the fifth series DECALOGUEfilmed in 1987. Being small, but not only because of that, A short film about murder doesn’t give us any clues about the reasons that led Jacek to murder, how he was caught and arrested by the police, how he became the newly arrived Piotr Balicki (Krzysztof Lobisz), an advocate of the abolition of death. penalty. Abolition, which he supports with a famous quote from Marx on the occasion of the bar entrance exam. Instead, the film insists on the lengthy washing of the taxi driver’s car, on the extreme dirt in the slums, on the preparation of the crime. For a few seconds, the taxi driver will meet a girl he would like to take for a ride in Jacek’s just stolen car, and the lawyer Balitsky will be in the same bar that the future criminal will pass through. Could this girl be the one who reprimands Jacek, or could this chance meeting mean the reasons for the state of despair that gripped the young lawyer after he lost a case that was unlikely to be won after a flawless plea? Actually, that’s not the point. Read the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro