MY NEW YORK - THE REVIEW OF THE FILM "21 X NEW YORK CITY" BY PIOTR STASIK
The latest documentary film by Piotr Stasik, "21 x New York City" is an extraordinary poem written by the camera, not any kind of cold image which is an attempt at making an objective portrait of the city, but rather a collection of reflections by the author on everything which surrounds him
"21 x New York City" is a world in a nutshell, a mosaic composed of 21 protagonists. We get acquainted with all of them in the subway. Seduced, we follow them to the surface in order to learn something more about their lives, about their problems, desires, passions and hopes.
A boy who cannot find his place among his peers, a man who spent half of his life in prison, a Polish woman who came to the New York City metropolitan area from a small town, a psychoanalyst, a drag queen... - the scope of characters is wide and diverse, but together they make an impression of being one protagonist. They are united by the mood and emotions pulsating in New York City. Some stories dominate, others are barely sketched. The character who is brought to the foreground is Sebastian, a young Asian who travels on the subway without any particular aim and records the surrounding reality on his mobile phone. He is the alter ego of the director, it is not an accident that Stasik helped him with a commentary consisting of notes from his own journal. This is not the only measure of this kind, as "21 x New York City" is a collage of images, words, utterances.
In this collage, there are no classic rules and principles, the order is dictated by emotions and mood. Everything is cemented by electronic music whose origin is in the subway. It is the music from the depths of the city.
Each of the protagonists is affected by loneliness, they communicate with each other only by using the modern technology - they are its hostages, and the hostages of this city, induced into a weird, hypnotic trance from which they cannot wake up anymore.
This is not only the image of New York City, Stasik goes a step further and looks from a global perspective. His poem is an emotional story about loneliness with which a person living in the 21st century has to vie, this is a disease of us all.
Daniel Stopa