Irena Jun in Marcin Bortkiewicz's "Drawn From Memory", photo: Studio Munka
"Sensitively depicting a grandson's devotion to his grandmother and her dreams", Drawn From Memory shows the effect of filming as a medium of communication on a grandmother and grandson's relationship. Receiving a camera for his high school graduation, Marek starts filming his grandmother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s. The camera lens transforms her into a human with desires and fears. She reveals that she always wanted to be a horror-film actress. Film director Marcin Bortkiewicz says "Marek gets to know a person who he spent his life with but did not know. If it wasn’t for the camera, he would still perceive her through 'stereotypical', motionless feelings". In an interview with Ioana Mischie at the Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival, the director said,
The most important thing for me was that people on the screen never die. […] We recognize this tragic fact after their death. And this is for me a cul-de-sac of human mentality. That we believe more the shadows on the silver screen than the truth of real life.
The film starts with three characters (mother, grandson and grandmother) looking at the camera, giving the audience the feeling of an amateur video. The grandmother's story becomes clear: She didn’t get the chance to be an actress because of the war. "Then, grandson and grandmother start to re-enact memorable scenes from classic films. The most famous scenes from films such as The Birds, Rosemary’s Baby and Psycho are re-created [...] The whole film becomes a love letter to the grandmother and also to cinema itself, signed by the filmmaker", Ali Deniz writes in a piece for Nisimagazine. Ioana Mischie calls the fiction film "an intriguing self-reflexive short", adding that it is both personal and philosophical in its contemplation of cinema.
Marcin Bortkiewicz, film and theatre director, dramatist, screenwriter and actor, was born in Słupsk, Poland, in 1976 and graduated from the University of Gdańsk and the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing.
Based in Western Canada, the Whistler Film Festival dedicated to furthering the art of film by providing programs that focus on the discovery, development and promotion of new talent. The Whistler Film Festival has become one of Canada's leading film festivals and is an emerging force on the international circuit.
Sources: culture.pl, Whistler FF, BIEFF, Nisimagazine
Editor: Marta Jazowska