Still frame from the film The End of Summer dir. Piotr Stasik, photo press materials
The summer is coming to an end, a new school year is beginning. With it comes the inauguration of the no. 70 Cadet School in Penza, a town with half a million residents near the Sura river, a tributary of the Volga, in southern Russia. The solemn academy commences, with an uplifting speech from the principal, "A new school year begins, a time of new, shared discoveries and interesting events"
Then a song performed by one of the schoolgirls, the school’s anthem and a speech of the president of Russia, Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev broadcast over radio. Next come the standard bearers, a parade and first classes – history, singing and drill. The recess lets the students share their holiday experiences and the fun they had, as well as adjust their uniforms in order not to attract the supervisors’ disapproval on the first day. The supervisors are strict, principled, demanding. One must know their place in line, emphasises one of the teachers during a lecture on loyalty, emotional restraint, in short – on how to become an model citizen, useful to the country.
In an interview with the website polishdocs.pl Piotr Stasik explains his inspiration for the film:
Two years ago during a stay at my parents’ country house I began looking for a book to read. Instead, I found my old journals. I was surprised to find the oldest of them had been written when I was eight. Two weeks later I was in Penza - 700km away from Moscow. A [typical contemporary] Russian province looks like Poland two decades ago. It felt like visiting a scene from my childhood. Accidentally, I stumbled upon a cadet school. I saw a column of marching boys, dressed in military uniforms. The youngest were seven, the oldest - seventeen. Finding the journals and visiting the school brought back the memories of my childhood, so I decided to make a film about it.
Observing the cadet school, the director focuses on three boys of different ages: Artiom is seven years old, Kiril eleven and Maxim sixteen. The youngest one is a model disciplined student, fully convinced about the superiority of what is sovereign over what is foreign. It is not only evident during classes, where he shines, trying to set an example and to show his full commitment to the school and the teachers, but also during play time, when he shows off his toy cars.
Kiril is definitely more distanced towards the school’s reality. It is not the boy’s whole life, as he is more interested in meeting the girl he longs for, rather than indulging in lengthy discussions about the superiority of Russia over the United States. As for cars, he dreams of owning a Porsche. During a meeting with a bemedalled war veteran, he asks a "rather unfortunate" question: "Weren’t you afraid of fighting? Weren’t you afraid of shooting people?" - only to reach the conclusion that he doesn't want to grow up as soon as he'd once thought he might.
I found a piece of my old self in each of them. Through the camera, I took a closer look at what their average day was like. And so emerged a film that is, on one hand, a journey back to childhood and, on the other, a story about the difficult fate of today’s Russia, - said the director.
Stasik is also responsible for the editing and camerawork on the film, honoured with the Golden Frog award for cinematography on the film at the Camerimage festival in 2010. The festival's jury justified their verdict with "the particular observational sense and compositional sensitivity, the consistency of style and tone, and the intimacy with which the camera approached the theme".
Piotr Stasik graduated from the Master School of Film of Andrzej Wajda where he runs a so-called film kindergarten. He is also a co-founder of the ę Society for Creative Initiatives, and has released several documentaries, including 7 x Moskwa (2005).
Koniec lata / End of Summer
Poland, 2010. Direction, screenplay, cinematography and editing by: Piotr Stasik
Co-direction by: Maciej Cuske, music by: Maciej Gwinciński, sound by: Maciej Diduszko, produced by: Agnieszka Janowska, Jacek Nagłowski, Witold Będkowski. Production: Centrala Sp. z. o. o., Telewizja Polska SA with the assistance of the Polish Film Institute, as well as the Ex Oriente Film 2008 workshop, organized by the Czech Institute Documentaries. Colour, 33 min.
For more information on the film, see the official website centralafilm.pl/the-last-day-of-summer
Awards:
- Award for Mastery at the Listapad Festival in Minsk, 2011
- The Golden Frog Grand Prix in a competition of short documentary films at the 18th International Festival of Cinematography Oliveira in Bydgoszcz, 2010;
- First Prize in the documentary category at the 11th International Film Festival of Central and Eastern Europe goEast in Wiesbaden, 2011;
- The Great Silver Polar Bear for best documentary at the 3rd International Documentary Film Festival Flahertiana in Perm, 2011.
- Onda Curta prize at the International Short Film Festival Tous Courts in Aix-en-Provance, 2011
Author: Jerzy Armata, November 2011. Translated by Roberto Galea, March 2012