The Calm - A Short Film By Krzystof Kieslowski: Events in Hyderabad

REVIEW FOR THE CALM - A...

The best thing to do after getting out of prison is starting life anew. But sometimes, even that doesn't work. The story of a young man actually destroyed for it.

The Hyderabad Film Club, in collaboration with the Embassy of The Republic Of Poland, New Delhi, & the Federation Of Film Societies Of India, is screening a series of short films and feature films of Polish director Krzystof Kieslowski, as a tribute to the legend, from 13th to 20th December, at Sarathi Studios, Ameerpet.

16 short films and 5 feature films will be screened during these days. Today, the 4th day, a short film called The Calm will be screened.

Filmed in 1976, The Calm a story about a young man in his 20s, who has just been released from prison after a 3-year sentence. He wants to start a new life in a place where he is not known, and dreams only of a job, a wife and a family.

He succeeds partially in fulfilling these dreams, but then runs into a conflict on a construction job between the corrupt boss and his fellow workers secretly planning a strike. He becomes a pawn in one camp while remaining true to his ideals in the other. The unavoidable conflict destroys him.

Krzysztof Kieslowski was born in 1941 in Warsaw, Poland. At a young age he decided to become a theatre director, but during those days there was no specific training program for directors. So he chose to study film as an intermediate step. After that he continued his education in the famed Polish film school in Lodz, that also produced Roman Polanski and Andrzej Wajda.

Kieslowski started his career with documentaries, focusing on the everyday lives of city dwellers, workers and soldiers. Though he was not an overtly political filmmaker, his productions were controversial, causing many discussions among the public as well as the authorities. He started with feature films, his first production was Personnel in 1975, which brought him the first prize at the Mannheim Film Festival. His other movies also received wide acclaim and honors.

In the '80s, he started his ambitious project