SOURCE: "Exile and Identity: Kieslowski and His Contemporaries," in Before the Wall Came Down: Soviet and East European Filmmakers Working in the West, edited by Graham Petrie and Ruth Dwyer, University Press of America, 1990, pp. 103-14.

In the following essay, Coates discusses the cohesiveness of Kieslowski's work and the fusion of Eastern and Western influences in his films.

How the West was Won is the title of the East European producer's unrealized dream film: a horn of plenty discharging hard currency into the coffers of its debt-ridden country of origin. At a time when hopeful speculation is resurrecting the specter of Central Europe, however, it may be worthwhile asking just where the West is. As a purely Utopian image in the East European consciousness, it may be located across the Atlantic; as a place of relative material well-being one may visit and work in, it may—for the...