SOURCE: "'The Political' in the Films of Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Kieslowski," in Cinema Journal, Vol. 34, No. 2, Winter, 1995, pp. 37-50.

In the following essay, Falkowska compares and contrasts the presentation of and audience reaction to the political content in Andrzej Wajda's Man of Iron and Kieslowski's Without End and A Short Film about Killing.

Films of Polish directors are frequently called political or are said to reveal political content. This essay constitutes an introductory proposal for a new project exploring issues which I have been working on for some time. The project deals with the questions of politics in Eastern European film and how they manifest themselves in works by Polish film directors. For the purposes of this study, I have chosen to focus on Andrzej Wajda's Man of Iron along with Krzysztof Kieslowski's Without End and A Short Film about Killing, works which can be considered representative...