57TH DOK LEIPZIG - REVIEWS OF POLISH FILMS AND INTERVIEWS WITH FILMMAKERS
For “Starting Point” by Michał Szcześniak, “Super Unit” by Teresa Czepiec and “One Man Show" by Jakub Piatek, the screening in Leipzig will be international premiere. On this occasion Polish Docs presents the reviews of first two films and interview with Jakub Piątek.
Next Monday, 27 October, the 57th edition of the DOK. Leipzig film festival starts in Leipzig. This year, the selectors of the festival invited nine Polish documentary films to participate in this event. Three of them, “Starting Point” by Michał Szcześniak, “Super Unit” by Teresa Czepiec and “One Man Show" by Jakub Piatek, will have their international premieres in Leipzig. Daniel Stopa, one of the editors of Polish Docs, wrote reviews of the first two films, and Dawid Myśliwiec interviewed Jakub Piątek. We present excerpts from these texts below.
"Starting Point"
In the documentary film “Starting Point” by Michał Szcześniak there is a scene, in which everything which is important focuses: both atmosphere and emotion. In this scene, the protagonist, a young female prisoner, is confessing her sins to the priest. Such shots are usually cut during editing process, as the director feels that it is too strong, too intimate, that one should not cross this kind of a border. But in “Starting Point” this scene ideally fits the whole, which is a kind of confession of the protagonist - maybe the first one in her life - confession in her prison cell, before the director, camera, audience and Ms. Helena, sick from her childhood.
You can read the full review here and an interview with Michał Szcześniak - here.
"Super Unit"
The entire film is a journey though long corridors, places hiding various types of machines and installations, underground garages, utility rooms and selected flats. Paweł Dyllus’s camera, without any persistence, without unnecessary hurry, keeping appropriate rhythm, penetrates some nooks and crannies so that it can enclose a full image of the life in the building in a visual and acousting synthesis - its awakening, functioning day and night. Everything here seems to be alive, every smaller and larger element of the Super Unit: lifts, blinking buttons, mailboxes, switches, rubbish chute, all kinds of pipes, ducts, all are parts of common organism, constantly pulsating.
You can read the full review here and the interview with Teresa Czepiec - here.
"One Man Show"
Dawid Myśliwiec: After watching your film, it is hard to want to become an actor. Would you like to?
Jakub Piątek: No! This is not my cup of tea. I do not have any need to be in the limelight, I felt and still feel good on the other side of the camera. I hope that my film would not be used only by parents who want to scare their children into choosing professions such as management or law.
Why did you choose Marcin Sitek?
We are doomed to work together, in a sense. Marcin volunteered another idea for a documentary film in which he cast himself as the initiator - the main protagonist. That idea did not appeal to me, but what worked was a kind of “suicidal flight” for me and for Marcin. Even more, he had already chosen a producer! In addition, I had an impression that Marcin as a protagonist unites several facets and issues which are common to my friends, to myself, and - to go on - also to my audience.
You can read the full interview with Jakub Piątek here.