Three Colours by Krzysztof Kieślowski - Hard Copy no.2
Wake In Fright announcements and fortnightly love letters to physical media.
Thank you for joining me for the second issue of Wake In Fright’s Hard Copy! Today I’ll be talking sugar cubes, synchronised exercise, and special features. This week’s Hard Copy is Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours trilogy, but first…
WAKE IN FRIGHT NEWS
The first show of our mini-tour is this Thursday (Sept. 12th) at The Scenic Hotel with Naomi Keyte. It will be fun and it will be free. Come along!
Our tour will continue with these dates:
Sept. 22 - The Three Brothers Arms, Macclesfield (SA)
Oct. 7 - Northcote Social Club ‘Monday Mass’ with St. Morris Sinners and Sour Worm (VIC)
Oct. 10 - The Grace Emily Hotel with short snarl, Jachin Mee, Allan McBean and Bear Phase (SA)
Our new single You Deserve is out now! You can listen to it on Bandcamp and all the streaming services. Merch and physicals will be available soon!
and now for…
Hard Copy no. 2 - Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours Trilogy
I was lucky enough to see Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours trilogy at Adelaide’s Mercury Cinema over a week in October of 2022 as part of their cinematheque program. Blue Monday, White Wednesday, Red Monday again. During his customary introduction, Ryder, the program’s curator made note of a specific shot in Blue in which Juliette Binoche’s character holds a sugar cube as it dissolves into a cup of coffee. Kieślowski, Ryder said, knew that this shot must be exactly five seconds long - any less and the audience would not connect it with Binoche’s character or view it with any kind of importance, any more and the audience would lose interest. Kieślowski in his perfectionism, had his assistants test out different kinds of sugar cubes to find the batch that would perform on cue. This attention to mundanity is part of what makes these films so special. I attended each of the three screenings with different company. Blue my friend Jachin, White my sister Ellie and our friend Bella, Red my friend Isaac. Nine months later, Jachin, Ellie, and Isaac gave me the Criterion box set of Three Colours for my 23rd birthday. I recognised the copy from a listing I had seen on Facebook marketplace a few weeks before. It made me cry.
As of this publication’s date, I have yet to return to any of the films of the Three Colours trilogy. I have, however, returned frequently to the boxset’s numerous special features. Oh special features! Can you beat them? The criterion edition of Three Colours is packed to the spine with interviews, commentaries, behind-the-scenes featurettes, and lessons in cinema from Kieślowski himself. Most important though, is the inclusion of three short films by Kieślowski: The Tram (1966), Seven Women of Different Ages (1978), and Talking Heads (1980). The Tram (or Tramway) is a silent short about a young man who falls in love with a woman on, you guessed it, a tram. Enrolled in Łódź Film School in an effort to avoid compulsory military service, Kieslowski directed the 5-minute picture as part of his studies, before becoming interested in documentaries. The film is by no means essential viewing, but the emotion it conveys in its brevity proves that Kieślowski always had what the Polish call the “sok”. The second film in the bunch, Seven Women of Different Ages is one of my favourite shorts.
I decided to watch Seven Women of Different Ages one lazy hour in August of 2023. If you don’t have a TV show on the go, an hour can be an awkward time frame in the audio-visual medium today. It’s too long to scroll indeterminately, too short to dive into a feature-length picture in search of true recreation. If a series of miscellaneous YouTube videos isn’t your bag, what to do? I had recently been reminded of the concept of the short film by my friend Louis, who had put on Sharon Lockhart’s 1998 short Goshogaoka - a non-narrative film shot at a Tokyo high school in which a group of students perform sets of synchronised exercise choreography - during a group hang a few months before. It’s a great watch (still available for free on YouTube as far as I know), and the impact of the short lingered in my brain as I scanned my DVD collection months later. Seven Women of Different Ages is a documentary film about ballerinas. It is seventeen minutes long and takes place over seven days. Each day we follow a new dancer. Thursday (where the film begins), a young girl of only eight or nine in a white knit headband and pink leotard tries not to giggle as she is taught how to move like a flower. “No need to look around. The flowers are sleeping”, her teacher chides. Friday, another girl, a teenager now, learns the “pas de basque”. Her instructor is irate and any giggles are long gone, “you’re standing like a samovar again, soon you’ll look like a weight lifter”. When the instructor steps into frame for a moment, we see that she is only in her early thirties. Saturday, a different girl, eighteen or so, warms up on the bar and watches the other dancers pensively. Later on, her instructor stands on her thighs and asks if she is rehearsing. She says she doesn’t know. Sunday, the big time. Tinny piano chords are usurped by an orchestra’s grand swells. Our dancer communicates hefty abstraction with deft and considered movement as she weaves in and out of expertly crafted shadows. She is met with fervent applause. Monday, a woman in her late twenties pants as her partner threads her through vomit-adjacent turns. There is no music. Tuesday, in a large rehearsal room audition results for Stravinsky’s Kiss of the Prophetess are read out. The voice notes that the ballet is sloppily titled, but unfortunately, they have yet to find a better translation. We focus on a dancer in her mid-thirties as other names are called. Finally, hers: she will understudy for a younger dancer. Wednesday, a class of pre-teen dancers, same as Thursday point their toes and straighten their spines, except now the camera fixes us to their middle-aged instructor. She adjusts their postures and counts them in before each dance. Seven Women Of Different Ages won the “Grand Prize for Short Subjects” award at the 1979 Krakow Film Festival. Its pure, observant style makes for a deeply refreshing experience in the wake of voice-over-heavy, direct-to-camera documentaries that have proliferated in the genre over the last few decades.
Last but worth a mention is 1980’s Talking Heads in which Kieslowski asks all manner of participants ranging from an infant to a hundred-year-old woman three questions:
What year were you born?
Who are you?
What do you most wish for?
The malleability of these questions across periods and generations makes them fertile ground for insight and reflection. What people of all ages communicate both in and around their answers is a fascinating thing to behold. I’d like to conduct my own version of Talking Heads (in Adelaide or otherwise) some day.
These are beautiful things and I’m glad to have them. I want to thank Jachin, Ellie, and Isaac for this wonderful gift.
Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for the next Hard Copy.
Places mentioned:
The Mercury Cinema - 13 Morphett St, Adelaide SA 5000
Work mentioned:
Igor Stravinsky’s Kiss of the Prophetess or The Fairy’s Kiss (1928)
Krzysztof Kieślowski’s The Tram (1966)
Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Seven Women of Different Ages (1978)
Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Talking Heads (1980)
Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours Trilogy (1994): Blue (1993), White (1993), Red (1994)
Sharon Lockhart’s Goshogaoka (1998)