NEWS RELEASE
St James Armenian Church
816 Clark Street Evanston IL 60201
TEL: 847-864-6263 email: stjamesevanston@yahoo.com
Program contact: Gevik Anbarchian at (773) 878-0215 or gevsan@yahoo.com.
ST JAMES ARMENIAN CHURCH
Film-Discussion Series: “THE TEN COMMANDMENTS”
FRIDAYS AT 7:30PM: FEB 18; MAR 18; APR 15; MAY 20; JUN 3
FREE admission
Saint James Armenian Church (Evanston IL) announces its Winter into
Spring film discussion series. This year we will be screening the
highly-acclaimed The Decalogue by the Polish filmmaker Krzysztof
Kieslowski. The Decalogue (The Ten Commandments) is a series of ten
hour-long films written and directed by Kieslowski for Polish
television in 1988. Each episode looks specifically at the relevance
of one of the Ten Commandments in the context of contemporary life
circumstances, and explores larger issues of morality, ethics and
justice in both religious and secular/humanistic terms. The Decalogue
is the recipient of numerous international film prizes including the
Cannes Special Jury Prize and Chicago Film Critics, Best Foreign
Language Film. The films are in Polish with English subtitles.
Film screenings will be held on Friday evenings in the main hall of
St. James Church beginning promptly at 7:30 with dinner and the film,
and discussion to follow from 8:30 until 10:00. Guests are encouraged
to bring a small dish and/or drinks to share with others.
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Friday, February 18 at 7:30pm: Decalogue I-I am the Lord thy God.Thou
shalt have no other Gods before me.
A university professor trusts in the infallibility of the computer and
instructs his young son in its use. Anxious to try out a new pair of
ice skates, the two consult the computer to calculate the safety of
the thickness of the ice on a nearby pond. A freak thaw results in
unforeseen and tragic consequences. (53 minutes)
Friday, March 18 at 7:30pm: Decalogue V-Thou shalt not kill. Jacek, a
disaffected youth, randomly and brutally murders a taxi driver.
Arrested, he is given Piotr, a young lawyer, to defend him. Jacek is
put on trial, found guilty and executed by hanging. Is an eye for an
eye just and does the legal system, in the name of the people and
sanctioned by the government, have the right to kill? (57 minutes)
Friday, April 15 at 7:30pm: Decalogue II-Thou shalt not take the name
of the Lord thy God in vain.
Dorota visits her dying husband in the hospital. She is pregnant by
another man. She asks the doctor for her husband’s
progress-considering abortion should he live, choosing life for the
fetus if her husband dies. By predicting the fate of the husband, is
the doctor determining life or death of the unborn child? (57 minutes)
Friday, May 20 at 7:30pm: Decalogue X-Thou shalt not covet thy
neighbor’s goods.
In this black comedy, two financially strapped brothers, Jerzy and
Artur, unexpectedly inherit a small fortune when their father wills
them the most valuable stamp collection in Poland. (57 minutes)
Friday, June 3 at 7:30pm: Decalogue VII-Thou shalt not steal.
Six-year-old Ania is being brought up by Ewa in the belief that Majka,
Ewa’s daughter, is her sister, whereas Majka is really her
mother. Tired and saddened by the deception and desperate to have Ania
love her as a mother, Majka “kidnaps” Ania and runs away from her
parents. (55 minutes)
ST JAMES ARMENIAN CHURCH 816 CLARK STREET EVANSTON IL 60201 TEL:
847-964-6263
email: stjamesevanston@yahoo.com
Divine Liturgy 10:30am every Sunday followed by fellowship.
Park FREE on Sundays in the Maple St garage one block west of the Church.
St James Armenian Church is conveniently located 2 blocks north of the Davis St CTA & Metra/UP North trains.
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Krzysztof Kieslowski (1941-1996)
Probably the best known Polish film Director of the last two decades, Krzysztof Kieslowski began his film career at Lodz State Theatrical and Film College. His first films were documentaries that concentrated on aspects of Polish life, culture, and politics under the then Communist Party. Indeed it was these conditions which helped spark the Solidarity movement which ultimately forced the Party to relinquish power by way of new general elections.
Starting with short black and white 16mm documentaries, Kieslowski began to develop a style that would become characteristic of his work. Emphasis on seemingly insignificant moments such as feet walking, or background characters helped to bring a natural clarity to his cinematography. The audience becomes a genuine third party, observing the natural flow of the subjects within his field of vision imposed by the camera. Realism was what Kieslowski concentrated on, and indeed his films, especially the features, have a documentary feel to them.
Earlier films reflected a social commentary on Polish martial law and the way in which ordinary people maintained their lives inside a restrictive social environment. His award-winning 1979 feature, CAMERA BUFF, a slyly humorous, satirical look at life in a corrupt provincial factory, may have had personal dimensions for Kieslowski as it depicts a filmmaker who exposes himself to both attention and criticism when he progresses from home movies to committed social documentaries.
Kieslowski learned firsthand that censorship may ride on the coattails of exposure with BLIND CHANCE (1981), which considered three possibilities for Poland’s political future as it explored three different outcomes springing from the premise of a student trying to catch a train. BLIND CHANCE was unable to include a fourth story in which Poland throws out the Communist Party entirely, and the remaining film, still quite impressive, was banned for over five years before finally being released in 1987. While the outcome of one BLIND CHANCE story was a blithely apolitical world (the student misses the train, and instead meets a sexy woman with whom he becomes involved), Kieslowski’s subsequent NO END (1984), while not forsaking wit entirely, nonetheless refused to be glibly satirical. The film’s hero, a
lawyer who represented many Poles oppressed by martial law, is dead at the film’s opening.
Kieslowski’s films always featured philosophical journeys into the human spirit and a concern for the moral and ethical implications of human action. Fittingly, he confirmed his status as a major contemporary director with DECALOGUE (1988), an ambitious series of ten hour-long films funded by Polish TV, telling stories “based” on the Ten Commandments. (In DECALOGUE 10, for instance, two brothers, an accountant and a punk rocker, both covet the stamp collection they have inherited from their father.) In the same year, Kieslowski expanded segments five and six into two features, A SHORT FILM ABOUT KILLING and A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE. Partially set, like the rest of the series, on a Warsaw housing estate, A SHORT FILM ABOUT KILLING is a grim and powerful tale drawing formal parallels between the act of murder
and the workings of the criminal justice system.
His first major international film, THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE (1991) explored human emotion in a very delicate often ironic way. Indeed as he put it, “…a sensitive film for sensitive people…” “Veronique” explores the simultaneous lives of two women, one Polish and the other French who are each other’s double, and who both feel a strange link to each other’s lives.
His magnum opus and fittingly enough, his last film project was a trilogy series entitled THREE COLOURS: BLUE (1993), RED (1994) and WHITE (1994).
Based on the three colours of the French Revolution, each film examines one thread of each theme. BLUE examines freedom, as portrayed by a woman who loses her family in an automobile accident, and the way in which she discovers a new direction to her life. WHITE looks at one man’s struggle for equality in his marriage in an aura of black humor, and finally RED concentrates on fraternity by highlighting the development of a relationship between a young model and an elderly man.
Krzysztof Kieslowski was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1941 and passed away in a Warsaw hospital in March 1996 due to heart complications but not before announcing tentative plans for another trilogy rumoured to be based upon the concepts of heaven, hell and purgatory.
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