Silesia is a special place in the Polish landscape, though diversely perceived. It's certainly seen as a hub of mining and heavy industry, but also as a unique 'little homeland' inhabited by people who follow their own ethos and are prepared to fight and die, but first and foremost to live for their native region. You can also see this in the cultural landscape: industrial Silesia has its own folklore, its specificity, its special character. The trouble is, for most people from outside the region Silesia is really an unknown land, observed either through the celebrations of St. Barbara's Day, which is Miner's Day in Poland, or Polish blues, of which the region seems a natural source.
People still have a very stereotypical perception of Silesia - as a grey, dirty region inhabited by unhappy people, says Maciej Pieprzyca, the director of Drzazgi / Splinters, about his native land. "When anyone wants to make a film about poverty and bleak prospects, they immediately think the best place to go is Silesia. It's sad that the region is seen solely through tragedy; but that's how it is. (Gazeta Wyborcza. Katowice, 25 February 2007)
A dozen or so films about Silesia and Silesian poverty have been made over the past decade. Silesia as such is a great theme for filmmakers, and remaining faithful to that theme yields excellent results, to mention the output of Kazimierz Kutz. The special character of Silesia is great for highlighting universal problems as well as strictly Polish dilemmas. Especially when, if you decide on a closer time horizon, Silesia will appear as a place of many facets.
A few of these are revealed in Maciej Pieprzyca's Drzazgi / Splinters - the story of three young people living in Silesia who come from different backgrounds and have different aspirations.
Bartek is nearing graduation and is given a chance to go away on a foreign scholarship when he finds out his girlfriend is pregnant. He doesn't know he is the object of a calculated scheme - all his partner wants is money, but that's something neither Bartek nor his working class family have. How can he break free of the dangerous man-eater?
Marta comes from a wealthy nouveau-riche family who wants to raise their status through her arranged marriage with the son of her father's business partner. It sounds like an episode from an old fairy tale (there are quite a few such fairy-tale or seemingly fairy-tale moments in Pieprzyca's film), but these days can a brave knight be found who will save the princess from the misery of a forced marriage?
The third protagonist is Robert - a gang leader who grew up in the streets, an ex-footballer whose career was ruined by an injury. What can give meaning to his life as it progresses from one street fight to another?
The lives of Bartek, Marta and Robert will converge one day, everyday monotony will disappear, life will take on new colour, brighter prospects will appear - mainly because that's life, not only in Silesia, but also because Pieprzyca is a great propagator of Czech cinema from the 1960s New Wave, where realism was built by blending comic and tragic elements (interestingly, Silesia was similarly portrayed by another filmmaker from the region, Jan Kidawa-Błoński, in his debut Trzy stopy nad ziemią / Three Feet above the Ground). First and foremost, though, it's because despite all their differences, the three protagonists have something in common. That something is the most human of all desires - the need for love. Thanks to this shared goal, the splinters of the title - rough human chips from a single tree - are submerged in the rapid river of life, portraying without excessive moralizing and unnecessary social sermonizing, but with zest and humour, many young people just like them - in Silesia, in Poland, around the world.
Maciej Pieprzyca is good at evocative storytelling. Written at the start of the decade, in 2002 the screenplay for Drzazgi / Splinters won a special mention in the Polish edition of the Hartley-Merill competition. At the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia, the film won the awards for directing debut and editing, while Karolina Piechota (Marta) won the award for acting debut. Antoni Pawlicki (Robert) was nominated for the Zbyszek Cybulski Award for the best Polish actor of the young generation.
- Drzazgi / Splinters, Poland 2008. Director: Maciej Pieprzyca, screenplay: Bartosz Kurowski, Maciej Pieprzyca, cinematography: Marek Traskowski, music: Grzegorz Daroń, set design: Jerzy Talik, costumes: Monika Jagodzińska, editing: Leszek Starzyński, sound: Robert Czyżewicz. Cast: Marcin Hycnar (Bartek), Antoni Pawlicki (Robert), Karolina Piechota (Marta), Tomasz Karolak (Elvis), Jacek Braciak (Zdzichu), Krzysztof Globisz (Dorota's father), Tomasz Kot (elegant guy). Production: AKSON Studio, Telewizja Polska - Agencja Filmowa, Canal+ Polska. Length 103 min. Released on 13 February 2009.
Author: Konrad J. Załęcki, December 2008
Awards:
- 2008 - awards for directing debut and editing, award for acting debut for Karolina Piechota (Marta) at the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia