Friday, 1 December 2017, 7:15pm
Winstanley Lecture Theatre, Trinity College, Cambridge
A screening of the second part of Krzysztof Kieślowski's "Decalogue: The Ten Commandments" (Dekalog, 1988) series. The screening will be introduced and followed with expert commentary and discussion with Dr Matilda Mroz, Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sussex.
After the discussion, we invited all attendees to a wine reception next to the lecture theatre.
Click here for photos from the event.
The Criterion Collection writes the following of Dekalog:
'This masterwork by Krzysztof Kieślowski is one of the twentieth century’s greatest achievements in visual storytelling. Originally made for Polish television, Dekalog focuses on the residents of a housing complex in late-Communist Poland, whose lives become subtly intertwined as they face emotional dilemmas that are at once deeply personal and universally human. Its ten hour-long films, drawing from the Ten Commandments for thematic inspiration and an overarching structure, grapple deftly with complex moral and existential questions concerning life, death, love, hate, truth, and the passage of time. Shot by nine different cinematographers, with stirring music by Zbigniew Preisner and compelling performances from established and unknown actors alike, Dekalog arrestingly explores the unknowable forces that shape our lives'.
Dr Matilda Mroz is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sussex. Her work examines how international and transnational film and new screen media reconfigure our relationship to memory and history, particularly in the context of Holocaust studies. Dr Mroz's research builds upon work conducted during her British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and appointment as Advisor in Film to the research group ‘Memory at War: Cultural Dynamics in Poland, Russia and Ukraine’, based at the University of Cambridge. This international collaborative project investigated how the public memory of twentieth-century conflicts, expressed in visual forms, mediates the ways in which Eastern European nations develop in post-socialist space. Dr Mroz co-authored the volume Remembering Katyn (Polity, 2012), the first transnational study of the cultural memory of the Soviet massacres at Katyn, with a particular focus on the impact of Polish cinema in Eastern Europe.
