Polish Heart

Documentary film is not dead, as Krzysztof Kieślowski once predicted. Be it Kieślowski had in mind the style of cinéma vérité, for in those times he could not imagine otherwise. A colleague from his film school years at Łódź, Marcel Łoziński, and an alumni of the same school in the 1980s, Jacek Bławut, are the most famous Polish representatives, whose style is near cinéma vérité. Łoziński’s latest film Poste Restante (2008) was awarded the prize for best short film by the European Film Academy in year 2009. The topic of the film are letters addressed to God, in particular how this extraordinary correspondence finds its way into a special department of the Polish post where it is classified as ‘undeliverable’. Bławut debuted with a feature film, in which it is at times impossible to distinguish the feature scenes from the documentary ones. Before Twilight (Jeszcze nie wieczór, 2008) tells the story of old actors, who are of no use to anyone anymore. The film was seen by approximately 30 000 viewers in cinemas across Poland.

Bławut and Łoziński teach in the Warsavian film school named after Andrzej Wajda, from which also many of the young directors in DocPoint's Polish Heart -programme have graduated. For a young director it can be difficult to completely free himself from the style of his teachers and to boldly develop something entirely his own. An example of a director, who goes his own paths yet without ignoring the traditions of observation, is Tomasz Wolski. Wolski has directed two very important films: The Clinic (Klinika, 2006) and The Actors (Aktorzy, 2009). Of these the latter is a certain kind of ‘making of’ of Jacek Bławut's above mentioned Before Twilight.

Visuality and strong traditions in cinematography are essential when speaking about Polish documentary. This is rooted in the tradition of Polish cinema which has developed in the film school of Łódź. An important documentarist of the young generation is a cinematographer for feature films, Marcin Koszałka. His nearly obsessional films, in which death and the passing of time are stable topics, have received attention and respect also abroad. It is precisely cinematography that makes them what they are. The programme of DocPoint features his latest documentary, Sentenced for Life (Wyrok na życie, 2008), which depicts the dreams of women undergoing sentences in prison. Their ‘dance’ infront of the camera, in other words, how they present themselves to the director is much more interesting than what they have to say. In this meta level the viewer learns more about the protagonists.

In his father’s footsteps, Paweł Łoziński was awarded the Prix Europe for best tv-documentary for his film Chemo (Chemia, 2009) in 2009. The film follows cancer patients during chemotherapy treatment. What do the protagonists speak about with each other? What are their visions of life? These questions are the foundations of this very classical Polish documentary. It is precisely the observation of the everyday that is typical to Polish documentary film. In the everyday the documentarist searches for the magic of life and for the truth about ourselves. Thanks to his camera this truth does not vanish.

Artur Liebhart
Director of PLANETE DOC REVIEW film festival