From the City of Lodz (1969) User Reviews

Passing of old Lodz

[max von meyerling · 5 April 2006]

This is something like a school assignment from when Kieslowski was a film student in Lodz. It is a simple visual celebration of the passing of old Lodz (what was left of it from the war) as new building replace the old and new people replace the old. The old are really resentful at being displaced. This expresses itself in the music. The old people, long time workers at the factory, are upset because the factories traditional mandolin band is being, well, disbanded, to be replaced by pop music. Believe me when I tell you that the pop music, taking on all sorts of forms from the kind of euro rock derived from misheard American and British bands to rumba rhythms with corny lyrics. Really the old stuff was great and now its gone. The women of the factory are being pensioned off one by one and they're all reluctant to leave but leave they must. Of course Lodz is something of an interesting case. A village which was chosen to be the Manchester of the Russian empire it became known as The Promised Land because of the availability of work in the huge textile plants and became the second largest city in Poland. The Polish population was further shaken by the war and virtually no one lives where either their parents or grand parents lived. The turnover has be the one constant of this synthetically created place. Kieslowski is unable to display his nostalgia except reflected from the hard surface of this little gem.

Tribute to the city of Lodz

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 3 June 2016]

"Z miasta Lodzi" or "From the City of Lodz" is an 18-minute documentary short film by the late Polish writer and director Krzysztof Kieslowski. And with this work here, he pays tribute to one of the biggest cities of his home country Poland. It is one of his early works and he was still pretty young at that point, but not one of his very first works. I personally did not find it too interesting or memorable and it dragged a bit too on some occasions. The problem is not at all that it is in black-and-white like most of Kieslowski's first works, but that it is just not interesting for anybody who has no connection to Lodz, who has never lived or been there. So I really only recommend it to citizens. The rest can skip it.