Drunk, hopeless and compelling: A short guide to a collective suicide in a good style. Polish docs @ Open City Festival in London.

Watching Polish films with foreign public always makes me feel uneasy. I hate this weird fear of finding myself in the position of having to act as a translator of what might have been lost in (often beyond verbal) translation . I hate this terrible moment when somebody nods with politeness and I know that he/ she has no clue whatsoever of what I (or the film) are talking about.

Needless to say, the potential embarrassment is even bigger, when it’s about films that I have not seen. And that is the case with the Polish shorts we are bound to see. With bunch of friends, artsy London crowd and skeptical and slightly hangovered Tadek (this detail will prove important later on).

Just on a footnote, a night before five of my six friends leave the cinema during the Czech screening of the film called Cinema-therapy. Gunes, who almost made it till the end, told me later that she had stayed so long as did not want to leave me alone.

My slavic soul already cries.

Anyway, here we are, I take a deep breath ...

The first film, is called, The Forth Man and tells a story of a guy who works in a deep forest in Bieszczady (end of the world sort of place), works not really to make a living of his work, but to make a drinking.... (denaturat it was). Soon we realize that alcohol is important in forgetting and reliving what our character cannot deal with ... the story of the fourth man, his son .... (can’t say what happens cause this is a proper film review!) To this beautifully depressing setting arrives a black guy, a medicine student as we learn, who needs money to continue studies and .... obviously Bieszczady is the first to go ...

Tadek whispers to me, that if the next one will be about alcohol he will cut his vains...

The next one, Out of Reach tells a story of sisters from Ruda Slaska, abandoned by their mother at childhood and disenchanted by their ignorant father. In the desperate strive for warm and family they decide to find their mother hoping or wanting to hope that this time she will act like a proper mother ...

At which point I am searching in my bag for antidepressants ...

Third film, The Doghill, tells a story of shepherds in Tatry mountains, who, surrounded by nature in its full sexual exposure with constantly copulating sheeps, dogs and horny cows, talk about their women who remain down in the valley ... yet, there are some existential forces that prevent them from getting down to see their wives and overcome own loneliness .

At this point I promise to my friends (who are - surprisingly- still around) that the last film owill surely be joyful and fun. I completely do not believe in what I am saying.

Fourth film, Honeymoon starts at a marriage ceremony (this is a good sign, gloria, I think). The place looks doggy and the braid’s dress cheap, but there are some signs of happiness. The joy does not last long as we soon realize that we are in the prison and soon after the ceremony the happy couple splits, the wife, back to her cell, the husband back to the Polish ‘normal life’ which appears to be driving him inevitably to pathology with sea of hopelessness, bureaucracy and vodka around

All of the films are actually very good ones. It is just that they are terribly sad. Interesting also, how from London perspective they all look actually quite similar. There is this overriding sense of melancholy in them. Life is an existential struggle and hope does not come easy. And there are characters that live the life as it is, that face the conflicts, do bad things (mostly alcohol related) and struggle. And somehow the seem to be grand in their own humiliation. And the dark sense of humor that exposes the everlasting pessimism, where vodka is the only cure.

These are not the films to enjoy. They tell local and at times provincial stores. In a sense I cannot find many more examples that would be a harsher opposition to British popular culture with the ‘life can only get better’ taste. Even their poetics and style is damn difficult and demanding for the non Slavic public. Yet, they are surprisingly universal and compelling

We leave the cinema and 60 minutes after we still talk about images what we had seen. Gosh, Poles are painful! Sometimes one needs painful.

What we did in Prague ... my first little film about exploring

It's been a while since we've been to Prague with girls. I thought I would share this little film - it is not really finished, but I am being told by Vikram Jayanti, great documentary filmmaker and our course tutor that you never really finish your films, you abandon them ... so this is what happened here.

This little piece requires back story - as the story unfolds in the film so did our few days in Prague unfold, without really a proper plan, without any set agenda, but with open eyes and curious minds. We met so many amazing women in Prague - Jennifer, Marketa, Teresa, Dana, Lisbeth and Eva, just to name few of them - Czech and expats, we hosted a swap party in our flat, took an active part in conference about women in business and glass ceilings in Eastern Europe, went out for some nice lunches and boozy dinners with out new friends. This film is just a little memory of these happy and fascinating days with them and a short introduction to what 'exploring' is .. enjoy.

The music comes from my favourite film ever, Czech film of course - Samotari (The Loners,Samotni), photo shows sculpture of Czech artist David Czerny

Storytelling 3.0. Final cut pro is my new powerpoint! Yihaaa

Editing has opened up the whole sea of possibilities I have not thought about before. It’s like going to a hidden place in which you had never been and have no preconceptions about.
Obviously, knowing me, I always find something to worry about. I can already see the risk of over - editing footage to the point where it’s only about form, not about the content any longer. And surely, there’s a temptation … with all the glamorous things that final cut pro can do for you. Surely editing will not replace a good story, but it can still make things a bit more visually bearable and interesting. And there’s this really weird moment where you look at your digitized footage and you know it can travel in thousands directions, you can tell the story of the same footage in unlimited number of ways. It would be interesting to see what different people with different experiences, backgrounds, and interests would do with exactly same footage. But I guess if you know what you what to say in you film, you know exactly what goes with what and how many editing spices you need to add …

On the other note, I am getting ready to shoot the THE FINAL thing. I’ve seen couple of visual references that you recommended, including Chantal Ackerman and Alan Berliner …. In different ways, totally impressed by both of them and touched by it to the point where I am starting to realize the impossibility of the challenge that faces me. OMG, 15 minutes is a really long time to say nothing. I’ve started to shoot couple of little things - like preparing morning coffee, unlocking my bike or opening window to embrace spring. I wanted to work out the style, tone and most importantly, the frame and the angle. And I am trapped a bit in thinking that somehow I need to try to get beyond what looks like just very generic scenes. I should give to each and every on them a special character, so they feel in a specific way, so they are there for a reason… so what I am trying to figure out if maybe I should decide that I do only particular type of shoots - like close ups, extreme close ups and than a wide plan with me walking out of frame…

For a moment, I guess I am thinking that the way to establish my presence is through my hands … hands that do things, hands that show hesitation, hands that take part in life …

Also I already hear the music (which is key since as you know NOTHING is going on in the bloody thing)

And I found a way to communicate my thoughts - though email, blogs, facebook, diary, mobile conversations. And I think that if not overused it can serve the purpose of pushing the narrative somewhere and giving some cues to the viewers about how to look at the film.

It has all quite a funny effect on me as I feel I am ‘narrating’ my life, not only my film…. Very weird feeling.

Photo by Alana Rae

High Hills Filmmaking. Can this be a perfect match?

Documentary Filmmaking Course. Diary Week 2

My first steps in filmmaking are actually much more intimidating that I have ever imagined. When I actually eventually found something interesting to shoot, by the time I unpacked the huge backpack (over 20 kilos), checked all settings, grasped the right angle ... my object of filming has long been gone .... The same trick of ‘disappearing objects’ repeated three times until I decided to give up the exercise of filming the ‘story’ and went for something that is there to stay for a bit longer ... like building, street or sky ...

It may does sound like a ‘hello I am blond’ type of story, but, trust me, there is some merit to it. First of all, the entire equipment is totally heavy. So there is no way you can wander around for the whole day, looking for interesting things. Especially, if you happen to wear high hills, assuming wrongly there is LIFE beyond your camera and filmmaking. The process of unpacking the entire ‘thing’ as well as make ‘it’ work is totally time consuming. Even if you want to keep most of the options on auto settings, you d’ better get patience - licence before.
And the most important – the process of filming itself. Its’s totally NOT how our dads used to hold camera on the beach, close to the eye, trying to shoot happy family moments and ladies in bikinis few meters away. You actually hold it in front of your belly or chest to make it more stable. In my case it meant, I was physically exhausted after 20 seconds of filming and my hands started trembling like the overstretched mussels in the gym. So probably I would be great for ‘shaker’ effect. Even once we a script like this.

Observation 1. Camera looks and weights like a gun. Hello brands, can we please ‘demasculinize’ professional filmmaking equipment ?

But there is more unfamiliarity involved than just technical issues. The process of shooting completely changes the way I see and interact with the world outside. I am referring to it as ‘IT’, because it’s like a ‘third person’ constantly present and imposing its presence on me and the people I am talking to. When I am taking photographs while talking to people camera is like my support, little visual notebook, yes, maybe a little interruption, but always a PART of interaction. It doesn’t change the way I see the situation. It helps me to express how I feel about the situation. With camera, its different, I feel it as something totally external to the situation. External, yet fundamentally changing it. And suddenly, I start telling story not from my point of view, but from a point of view of the ‘it’, that doesn’t feel ‘me’. And it’s still IT, cold, black and heavy and alien. Maybe I need to internalize it. Or maybe I need a partner.

Observation 2. Camera is a ‘third’ person in the situation. I need to internalize IT to make other people feel that my ‘artificial eye’ is mine.