54TH KFF: PANORAMA OF THE POLISH FILM - DOCUMENTARY FILMS ABOUT ARTISTS

For a long time, great artists have fascinated documentary filmmakers, who were always eager to depict famous biographies from the world of art in their films. At the 54th Krakow Film Festival, within the frames of the Panorama of the Polish Film, one can see a couple of films which tell the stories of Polish artists. Although they represent varied artistic quality, and their protagonists come from different worlds and branches of culture, the films make up an interesting image of Polish artistic circles.

Wojciech of Błędów

Andrzej Sapija, who has already made films about, among others, Tadeusz Różewicz and Kazimierz Karabasz, in his latest film makes the viewers acquainted with Wojciech Fangor, excellent Polish painter, who after years of successful career settled down in a tiny Błędów in Mazovia. As the protagonist himself confesses, not many people in the town realise who is the 92-year-old artist and what he achieved.

The film “Fangor – The Pictures Will Remain“, in spite of its archaic form and the fact that its soundtrack can sometimes be irritating, draws an extraordinary image of the protagonist, who captivates the viewers with his sincerity and distance to the world and himself. Fangor admits that in the times of war turmoil he was not interested in heroism, only in survival, and the belated emigration to the United States allowed him to avoid conscription to the American army fighting in Korea and Vietnam. The dignified elderly gentleman speaks without embarrassment also about the wealthy family and his relationship with the tyrannical father.

We get acquainted most of all with the man, but also with the great artist with an incredibly wide range of interest and the tireless innovator.

A tribute to the classic

Anna Schmidt, making the film about the composer Krzysztof Penderecki, decided to do it on a much larger scale than Andrzej Sapija did. The places of residence of these two, equally brilliant protagonists, are totally different - Penderecki's Lutosławice, well-maintained residence, bathing in greenery, contrasts with the creative chaos which reigns in Fangor's studio in Błędów. The character of the film by Schmidt, which is a little bit resembling of a congratulatory card - long excerpts from the famous works, such as "Lacrimosa" or "The St. Luke Passion," the director intertwines with the statements of the great individualities from the world of culture, for whom it is nor proper to talk about the master in any other way than using superlatives.

This is, however, not a problem - the short, humorous chat with Andrzej Wajda or a few sentences from the musicians for whom Penderecki composed, complement the image of a great personality, whom the protagonist of this documentary undoubtedly is. At the same time, the composer reveals to the viewers both spheres of his life - work and private ones. From the film "Penderecki: Paths Through The Labyrinth" we will learn both how it came to the situation that the composition for the Solidarity was composed and how the Penderecki family extended their very rich garden.

This is one of these films, thanks to which eminent individuals, existing somewhere in the orbits of the divine talent, become closer to us, mere mortals.

Debunking the myth

The film by Katarzyna Kościelak, "Bard",  which is a kind of celebration of the 10th anniversary of the death of Jacek Kaczmarski, artist with an unprecedented status in the history of Polish music, has a totally different character. The director, using the statements of the people from the closest environment of the musician, achieves the difficult process of demythologisation - not in order to debunk or hurt his reputation, but to give him justice and humanise him. Kościelak wants to show a complicated, ambiguous artists, who coped not only with creative problems, but also with problems in his private life, related to his difficult relationship with his parents.

The statements of friends from different stages of Kaczmarski's life have both annalistic value - because they allow to chronologically reconstruct his extraordinary career, and biographical value, because they allow the viewer to understand some of the life choices of the protagonist. Not everyone knows about almost celebrity-like caprices of the author of the song "Obława" (Wolf Hunt), many viewers will be surprised by the fact that being considered "the bard of the Solidarity" with the passage of time became inconvenient for Kaczmarski himself.

The film by Katarzyna Kościelak takes Jacek Kaczmarski from the pedestal of being the holy poet-oppositionist, at the same time enabling this legendary protagonist to exist in the minds of Poles in a more multidimensional way. "Bard" achieves a paradoxical thing - by revealing the faults and weaknesses of its protagonist, makes the great artist even greater.


Dawid Myśliwiec