Whether you believe that General Jaruzelski, one of the People's Republic of Poland communist leaders, was possessed by the wicked demon of Baron Samedi or not, Bartek Konopka and Piotr Rosołowski's film shows a Haitian voodoo priest named Amon Frémon freeing a nation from evil spirits. While Art of Disappearing comes to cinemas in Poland, Culture.pl presents an exclusive video with one of its creators
The starting point is the true story of Frémon and Jerzy Grotowski. The great director and theatre reformer did in fact invite the Haitian priest to visit the People's Republic of Poland in 1980, but Bartek Konopka and Piotr Rosołowski's vision of what precisely happened to him is fantasised.
Frémon had Polish blood running through his veins. He was from Kazal, a "half Polish village" as Konopka says in the video for Culture.pl. His ancestors were soldiers in Napoleon's Polish legion who settled in the New World at the beginning of the 19th century. Just like other people in his village, Amon was fascinated by the land of his forefathers, a country they felt close and very far from at the same time. Konopka adds,
Poland is considered to be a mythical place. Frémon is the first person from his village to visit to the ancestral Polish land. It is hoped that he will bring back to Haiti riches and experience. However this is not what happened. Amon saw people who were enslaved. [...] emotionally distant, who didn't speak much to each other, unable to show emotions.
When a newcomer from the New World takes a look at Poland in 1980, he sees a lot more than the average Pole was able to see. The grey reality and it's rule-abiding people surprised Frémon on every step. He didn't understand why people had to have so many rugs in their houses and why old ladies had to queue for so long to buy at least one rug. "Everything here looked different. It even rained differently, the drops were louder. As if it was a country of deaf people", the film's narrator says.
The Haitian asked himself why the Poles acted as if they were enslaved and how he could help them. "They didn't want to be with me. They didn't even want to be with each other" Amon says in the film. To answer questions about the Polish soul under the oppressive weight of the socialist authorities, manipulated by outside powers, Amon makes use of what he knowns best - voodoo ceremonies. "He searches for the spirits, ghosts of Poland", Konopka says, "to perform a big ceremony".
Art of Disappearing isn't exactly a documentary. It's more of a cinematic impression that makes use of the documentary form. Insistent on showing their country from the point of view of a Haitian voodoo priest Konopka and Rosolowski reached for the help of the writer Ignacy Karpowicz, known for "knowing the Gods and liking to write about them" - Konopka says in the video. Karpowicz says in the video,
Writing the story of Amon Fremon was a strange experience. It was like putting myself in completely different shoes. This happens with every character and every piece but here it was meant to correlate with the images so that procedure was entirely different. There isn't that much text but i wrote it for a very long time.
The film is part of the Guide to Poles series produced by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. The five documentaries explore the sources of Poland's cotemporary freedom and creativity: rock music, fashion, sex, mountaineering, toy-making as some of the many ways of expressing individual freedom under an oppressive regime.
Editor: MJ 18.07.2013
Sources: culture.pl