Marczak graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, he also studied at the California Institute of Arts. He made his first documentary short entitled Kobieta poszukiwana [editor's translation: Woman Wanted] in 2009 in the First Documentary programme. The story of a French aristocrat searching for a wife in Poland received a honorary mention at the Koszalin Festival of Film Debuts 'The Young and Film'. In 2001 he directed his first feature At the Edge of Russia, which takes place in a watchtower in the Northern wastelands of Russia. It was noticed at a few festivals and won him the HBO Documentary Films Emerging Artist Award in Toronto.
The director gained popularity thanks to his next documentary Fuck for Forest, which tells the story of a group of modern hippies who have sex to raise money for Amazonian forests. Marczak looks at the antiglobal commune from the outside, showing that its members seem too consumed with their own ideals and mannerisms to notice real problems of those whom they want to help. As Tadeusz Sobolewski wrote for Gazeta Wyborcza:
What a paranoid situation: newcomers from Europe – which, as Michel Houllebecq predicts in The Map and Territory will once become a forest preserve – confront themselves with Indians, who care about evolution and technology. What is the position of the author of this great documentary? I think he is a seeker as well and there is more idealism than irony in him. He is a bit similar to Herzog in this regard. What's most interesting in his movie is the moment of surprise, whe the world gets complicated in front of our eyes and the viewer is put at a crossroads and starts to doubt the sacred cause of saving the Amazon.
Fuck for Forest was nominated for the Polish Orzeł Film Award for Best Documentary, and the Dazed and Confused magazine placed it on the list of ten most innovative documentaries in the recent years.
The director's next film, All These Sleepless Nights, turned out to be an international success. It premiered at Sundance Film Festival in the international documentary competition, and Marczak won the prize for best director. The jury wrote in a statement:
This filmmaker made a visually stunning film with unique vision. We feel the director is pushing the art of nonfiction into brave new territories. We the jury is really looking forward to see what this talented filmmaker does in the future.
The film premiered in Poland at the New Horizons Film Festival in Wrocław. All These Sleepless Nights won the audience award. The director once again questions the rules of genres: one cannot really say whether it is fiction or a documentary, but that doesn't seem to matter. We follow a group of young protagonists who wander around Warsaw at night, smoke cigarettes, drink, dance and talk about love. The critics compared the movie to Andrzej Wajda's Innocent Sorceres, one of the best films about youth in the history of Polish cinema. The charm of All These Sleepless Nights consists in a lack of pretence to creat 'the portrait of a generation' or trying to 'say something important'. What Marczak was able to do is to capture a moment in life, when one clumsily starts to build one's identity while looking for love, friendship and meaning. As Małgorzata Sadowska wrote:
An attempt to stop time – this dominating desire in the world of All These Sleepless Nights – is destined to fail, although, paradoxically, where man fails, cinema wins with its alchemic skill to reclaim, regain and save the passing moments.
Filmography:
- 2009 - Kobieta poszukiwana / Woman Wanted
- 2010 - At the Edge of Russia
- 2012 - Fuck for Forest
- 2016 All These Sleepless Nights
Written by Natalia Mętrak-Ruda, January 2017.
