Still from "North from Calabria", dir. Marcin Sauter. Photo: facebook.com
Filmmaker Marcin Sauter started off as a photographer. He completed his photography studies at the Polish National Film, Television and Theatre School in Łódź. Subsequently he attended the documentary film course at the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing. He finished the course in 2005, but still remains involved with the school. Hence his involvement in the Paladino Film Production Team, an artistic group founded by Sauter's friend from the documentary course, Thierry Paladino, a French Italian. The award for cinematography for the film Za płotem / Behind the Fence (2005) at the Kraków Film Festival in 2005 marked Sauter's grand entry into the circle of professional documentary filmmakers. A year later he received the Kraków Silver Hobby-Horse for the film Kino objazdowe / The Travelling Cinema (2005). In addition, together with Paladino Film Production Team, Sauter produced Andrzej Wajda: Let's Shoot! (2008) which was awarded the First Prize at the Arts & Film Festival in Prague.
It is hard to describe the genre of North from Calabria, the newest venture from Sauter and his friends from Paladino Team. It seems as if the filmmakers' interference keeps it from being acknowledged as a "pure" documentary. On the other hand, it communicates certain truth about the place, a town, and about its residents, while attempting to formulate a universal message.
Sauter calls the film a "fairy-tale documentary". The film suggests you are dealing with a fictionalised documentary, or perhaps even with a feature film. There are, after all, a number of professional actors in the filmmakers' team, including Hanna Kochańska and Marcin Janos Krawczyk, the latter plays the curate in the television soap Plebania / Presbytery. He wears a clerical collar in Sauter's film, too. Taking a closer look at the priest in the documentary, you may begin to suspect that instead of ministering his parish he came there to provoke others. In many respects North from Calabria reminds one of Marcel Łoziński's Jak żyć? / Recipe for Life and Krzysztof Kieślowski's Z punktu widzenia nocnego portiera / Night Porter's Point of View. In these films the directors use provocation to expose anxiety-causing mechanisms. Many claimed that Łoziński's 1977 film was point-blank an anti-system form, as it showed a simple way of provoking young-wing Communist Party activists to race for material goods. Kieślowski's film produced in the same period was similarly anti-system, in it the guardian of the law in a socialist state turned out to be a fascist unaware of his own actions.
The film surprises the audience by its dynamics and its closeness to the inhabitants of a small Polish town. The filmmakers show the life of Chełmsk Śląski, located close to the Czech border and 40 kilometres away from Wałbrzych. Today it is a small village, but in the past it was a bustling town with an 800-year history - the film urges for the place and its inhabitants not to be stigmatised, but to be praised. For one month Chełmsk Śląski became a location set and, together with the village mayor, the filmmakers motivated the residents to prepare grand summer festivities.
The actress Hanna Kochańska creates a performance based on Julian Tuwim's Żołnierz królowej Madagaskaru / The Soldier of the Queen of Madagascar with local women performing. The "priest" not only climbs up the belfry but walks the length and breadth of the vicinity accompanied by children, someone builds a stage, causing an understandable stir among the residents, and Thierry Paladino gives a class on Mediterranean cuisine. Geodesists emerge on the streets, people begin to talk about a new road, local amateur filmmakers shoot a film about a journey to outer space, children build a panorama of the town from sand. The filmmakers engage in conversations with the locals and learn their customs. They are surprised by the warmth of their reception. Indeed, they judge the people they come across but they are judged, too. In many respects the locals are equal to the rich and famous, and Chełmsk itself, a shabby relic of a bygone era at first glance, turns out to be a cheerful, warm place with unique charm, where you really feel like living. Although the festivities prepared with such devotion do not turn out well, a violent rainstorm makes it impossible to show Tuwim's play, nonetheless clearly moved Therry Paladino, who announces to his father, who is staying in southern Italy, that while people in Chełmsk may behave differently from the people in Calabria, they are essentially greatly similar: they feel, have fun and look at the world with equal curiosity.
Rev. Andrzej Luter writes in "Kino" in November 2010:
Sauter's film, is an attempt to show an ideal town, where tolerance, respect, the spirit of community and the responsibility for the life of other people, including the neighbour you have until now ignored, prevail. Thanks to Radosław Ładczuk's and Łukasz Gutt's cinematography the film also manages to capture something elusive and true which begins to take place between the locals and the film crew.
North from Calabria, the film which is warm and full of kindness, has been shown at national and international festivals. It received the FIPRESCI honourable mention in Perm, Russia and two awards, given by the Trade Union ver.di and the Ecumenical Jury, at the prestigious DOK Festival in Leipzig.
- North from Calabria, Poland 2009. Writer and director: Marcin Sauter. Cinematography: Radosław Ładczuk, Łukasz Gutt. Music: Maciej Cieślak. Film set: Bartłomiej Skolimowski. Sound: Zofia Gołębiowska, Dariusz Wancerz. Editing: Agnieszka Glińska. Production: Polish Filmmakers Association, Andrzej Munk "The Young and Film" Studio, Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing, TVP Kultura. Co-funding: Polish Film Institute, The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Distribution: Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing. Opens November 16, 2010.
Author: Kondrad J. Zarębski, November 2010. Translated by: Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer, November 2010.