Magdalena Różańska shooting Warsaw Stories, photo: Anna Rzepka / WFDiF
Warsaw Stories is a film project constructed from six intertwined novellas. The whole makes up a peculiar panorama of the Polish metropolis. Protagonists come from various social milieu, both young and old, with different dreams and ambitions. They live in a Warsaw shadowed by the silhouette of a cross. The main character, Igła (Needle), played by Eryk Lubos, is a self-proclaimed messaiah and an ex-con. Igła gets the chance to feel a part of society while standing beneath a wooden cross spontaneously erected by a crowd to commemorate the Poles who died in the Smolensk jet crash in 2010.
The power of youth
Warsaw Stories is the joint vision of five filmmakers from the Wajda School: Maciej Cuske, Kacper Lisowski, Nenad Mikovic, Mateusz Rakowicz and Tymon Wyciszkiewicz. Work on the scripts also engaged Piotr Subbotko, who takes a limited part in the film's production, due to other professional commitments. Kacper Lisowski, in a talk with Tadeusz Sobolewski, said that "We have created something like a film crew. This film is a common group effort. And once this machinery is set in motion, and the spark sets off the fire, and you feel it in the people, amazing things can happen."
The Warsaw Stories directors make reference to Polish cinema's storied past, and to the work of directors such as Andrzej Wajda, Roman Polański and Jerzy Kawalerowicz. They each bring very different working experiences. Kacper Lisowski is a cameraman who worked on Paweł Łoziński’s Chemia, among others, and director of the documentary biography of filmmaker Jerzy Kawalerowicz, entitled Whisky with Milk. Mateusz Rakowicz is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts, and a storyboard author who cooperates with Agnieszka Holland and Władysław Pasikowski. Tymon Wyciszkiewicz and Nenad Miković are graduates of the Łódź Film School.
The motif that will bind the novellas is directed by Maciej Cuske, one of the prominent documentary makers of the young generation, whose films include Kuracja, Antykwariat and Na niebie, na ziemi. Each filmmaker has an impressive array of achievements, but none has yet released a feature debut. The directors thus help each other, taking turns as assistant to their colleagues as work moves from one motif in the project to the next.
The cast in Warsaw Stories includes Marta Lipińska, Klara Bielawka, Monika Dryl, Eryk Lubos, Zbigniew Zamachowski, Łukasz Simlat, Andrzej Andrzejewski and Janusz Chabior. The film is being shot by Arkadiusz Tomiak, who worked as an operator with Marcin Krzyształowicz on Manhunt, Jan Jakub Kolski's Daleko od okna and for Adrian Panek's Daas. Warsaw Stories continue the series of debuts produced by Warsaw’s Documentary and Feature Film Production Company (Wytwórnię Filmów Fabularnych i Dokumentalnych), which has released Bodo Kox’s Dziewczyna z szafy / Girl from the Closet, Lynch by Krzysztof Łukaszewicz and Mall Girls by Katarzyna Rosłaniec. The budget of the production is almost 3 million złoty.
In the Shadow of the Cross
The central theme for the stories are manifestations that occurred in 2010 on Krakowskie Przedmieście, the part of Warsaw's Royal Route that leads to the historic Old Town. In spontaneous commemoration of the sudden deaths of 98 people, including the presidential couple and dozens of Poland's leaders and dignitaries whowere en route to a ceremony honoring Poles killed in the Katyń Forest massacre in the Second World War, a wooden cross was mounted in front of the Presidential Palace. The cross, erected illegally, became a flashpoint of social conflict. Attempts by officials including the newly elected president to move it into nearby St. Anne's Church were met by huge manifestations in the streets of the capital, demanding that the cross be returned to the front of the Palace.
"The war of the cross is not our theme", as Mateusz Rakowicz comments. Rather, it is at its location that the protagonists' paths will intersect. As Kacper Lisowski explains,
[...] everything that is significant takes place somewhere else. My hero, performed by Janusz Chabor, is an alcoholic, who thinks he has lost his life. He is the only one to experience some form of enlightment under this cross [...] but it is not clear if it is religious, or if it is the influence of alcohol.
Though Warsaw Stories draws on real events - some material was shot during manifestation that took place - the directors aren't aiming for a documentary recording, but for a story about people, loneliness and confusion.
When journalist Tadeusz Sobolewski asked whether the artists intend to mock the supporters of the cross, Lisowski said
There isn’t even a trace of contempt or scorn. I've filmed patients in the oncology ward, I filmed shamanist priests in Mongolia, illegal coal mines in Ukraine and I always searched for a common human denominator. [...] filming the march on the 13th of December, we really felt the bond that tied these people together. You could see how well they felt together, as if they had all moved back to the 1980s.
Maciej Cuske confirms that Warsaw Stories will be a univeral, human story, and not a political one. In the talk with Sobolewski, he said:
I remember being in Krakowskie Przedmieście in 2010, when the cross was moved to the church. [...] I filmed one of the women, a defendant of the cross. [...] She told me about her loneliness, and how [her husand] used to beat her. And it was only there under the cross that she felt she could actually do something for others, and for Poland. When I was listening to her, I began to get an idea of what was actually happening there. These people came there because they needed others. This is what this film is going to be about - made up of caricatured stories, seemingly funny, and actually terrifying. Isn’t it a sad image: a crowd of people who don’t know what they are arguing about?
Beyond politics
Though the filmmakers emphasise their lack of political engagement, their Warsaw Stories project is already stirring controversy. It takes up issues once reserved for journalists covering daily political battles. In Solidarni 2010 (The Solidary 2010), directors Ewa Stankiewicz and Jan Pospieszalski sketched Polish martyrdom spurring the Catholic right wing, who feel locked out of public debate. The documentary Przebudzenie (The Awakening) by Joanna Lichocka, a right-wing journalist, also paid homage to the "defenders" of the Smolensk cross. The themes also engage the artist Artur Żmijewski, associated with the leftist Krytyka Polityczna. In Catastrophy, Żmijewski took on the role of anthropologist-filmmaker, recording rituals taking place along Krakowskie Przedmieście, depicting dangerous potential in symbolic gestures.
The Warsaw Stories team does not intend to glorify or provoke either of side in these disputes. But Rakowicz admits that the film might shake up right-wing activists and their supporters. "But this is not the reason we are making it. Janusz Margański, a specialist in the work of Gombrowicz and a set designer, recently told me that in our country there are very many people just waiting to be offended, and I am sure that many of them will take their chance at this occasion."
According to Sobolewski, Polish filmmakers after communism fell in 1989 decided to hand pertinent political and social issues over to the media. He argues that
[...] the present saturation of emotions and controversy is a huge chance for directors and a potent area of work for them. The cinema should be a mirror of reality, and a search for its new form. In the world of withering meaning, our cinema seems to gain back its voice. Let it form its own manifestation, let it participate, mock, blaspheme, pray, show empathy, scorn, free and help to transgress reality.
Editor: SRS, based on the Polish article from Bartosz Staszyszczyn
Source: press release, Portal Filmowy, Gazeta Wyborcza