In “Far from the city” by Maciej Cuske an idyllic atmo­sphere of a vil­lage and the pas­sion of cre­ation are com­bined with a reflec­tion of grow­ing up, related to the very first ques­tion asked of him­self and then of the world. Bolesław Racięski has spoken to the dir­ector about the documentary.

In “Far from the city” by Maciej Cuske a group of boys (includ­ing Staś– director’s son) go to the coun­tryside to make a fea­ture film. The prot­ag­on­ists have a lot of ideas like the appear­ance of a mys­ter­i­ous mur­derer, a dying land owner and even a loath­some mon­ster attack­ing an ‘inno­cent as a lamb’ old lady. The boys, freely swap­ping between the roles of cam­era oper­ator, dir­ector and act­ors, bravely grapple with a film medium, put­ting con­sec­ut­ive ideas into life. In their spare time they talk about a future life (one wants to be a Hol­ly­wood dir­ector, another suc­cess­ful law­yer), exchan­ging thoughts on real­ity, shar­ing their doubts and hopes.



Once again, after “Remem­ber the Sab­bath day to keep holy”, you turn the cam­era on a mem­ber of your fam­ily. Where does this decision come from?

Maciej Cuske: This is not a film about my son, rather one about a small group of friends, typ­ical today’s boys. This film was a return to my own child­hood, to the sum­mer I once lived through. I was try­ing to remem­ber that moment, when I star­ted to ser­i­ously pon­der about life for the first time. I thought Staś and his col­leagues are a bril­liant excuse to tell all about it. The fact that for some time now they are mak­ing their own ama­teur films, inspired me to take them on hol­i­days to a far-​away place without tele­vi­sion, inter­net and to encour­age them to play and work together. I am pleased that I man­aged to cap­ture this par­tic­u­lar moment of their life.


I can ima­gine that Staś is used to hav­ing a dad “tooled-​up” with a cam­era, but how did the rest of prot­ag­on­ists react to the per­spect­ive of being filmed?

M.C.: A bit like all pre­vi­ous prot­ag­on­ists of my films, so it wasn’t that easy over­all, espe­cially in the begin­ning. Or maybe it was a bit more dif­fi­cult? Four boys in front of the cam­era, a grown-​up dad of their friend dur­ing rather intim­ate dis­cus­sions — it made a situ­ation spe­cial. Often it star­ted with a silly laughter, some­times with an airy pre­tend­ing of nat­ur­al­ness. I was wait­ing until all of it would settle down and, at some point, I was turn­ing the cam­era on. I was sur­prised that when they star­ted to talk about ser­i­ous issues, they were for­get­ting about me entirely, at least until they didn’t run out of the sub­ject.


In “Far from the city” you are talk­ing with prot­ag­on­ists and other res­id­ents of the vil­lage from behind the cam­era. How­ever, at the end of the film, you mark your pres­ence in an uncon­ven­tional way — ask­ing boys to repeat one of the scenes from the arising doc­u­ment­ary. It comes out as no sur­prise that there are times when doc­u­ment­ary makers hap­pen to inter­fere in what they cap­ture, but where does a decision to use such a tech­nique come from?

M.C.: In fact, I didn’t want to give myself up. And I didn’t use my per­son in the edit­ing for a long time. How­ever, at some point, I tried to use these acci­dent­ally recor­ded frag­ments jux­ta­posed with my reac­tions. I’ve real­ised that they add some mean­ing to the film. Thanks to them, I stopped pre­tend­ing that it was me who took the boys on hol­i­day and that there was a par­tic­u­lar aim. I wanted to teach the boys some­thing, I wanted them to live some­thing through. It’s true that using this pro­ced­ure I was dis­cov­er­ing the pro­cess of mak­ing a film; I show my slips, com­ments to prot­ag­on­ists dur­ing film­ing the scenes and, towards the end, even influ­en­cing their beha­viour, but it is an indic­a­tion of my hon­esty. The film is being made exactly in such a way, and a slow unveil­ing of this mech­an­ism, I hope, won’t dam­age the belief in authen­ti­city and hon­esty of the prot­ag­on­ists.


At some point, the boys talk about their planned film stat­ing that “it won’t be a doc­u­ment­ary for sure.” Are you not seduced by an idea of dir­ect­ing a fea­ture film? After all, you are accred­ited with one already– filmed together with Mar­cin Sauter ‘What do you think about it, Galuszko?“

M.C.: I hope that I will be able to make doc­u­ment­ar­ies already revolving in my mind and those still await­ing me. Shoot­ing a doc­u­ment­ary reminds me of an inde­pend­ent pro­duc­tion. I’ve got a micro budget and a small crew to help around, I try not to allow any­one to impose any­thing on me. I feel good with that, although I am writ­ing a fea­ture based on it. Besides, together with Mar­cin Sauter, we want to revisit out teen­age adven­ture and col­lab­or­ate on another film about ourselves over the years, when we were twenty-​years-​old.



Maciej Cuske was inter­viewed by Bolesław Racięski.


(Trans­la­tion by Aleksandra Kaplon) (27.05.2011)