Save the remains of light hidden in the heart

– War.”

I must admit to you that I missed this, and Tarkowski's “Ivan detease” displayed here under the title “The kid of War” I know very well. You know, I have a peculiar connection to this movie through a relationship with Nikolai Burlayev, who played the lead function in it, the title Ivan, the kid of war. At a time erstwhile you were inactive going to Russia, which was a long time ago, Burlayev was the head of 1 of the movie festivals he invited me to, and we were friends. He trusted me with any very intimate stories from his own life, including his relation with Tarkowski. I am delighted with the “Children of War” and the subsequent masterpieces of Tarkowski, especially “The Mirror” and “Nostalgia”.

"Kill the beaver" sparked my memory of "The kid of War" and I think it was not accidental, due to the fact that your movie – besides in the context of what is happening present in the planet – is simply a thrilling survey of the destructive impact of war on human life without showing front scenes. Paradoxically, there is more war in it than in many battalion productions, due to the fact that alternatively of an detonation – there is this terrible, war-like silence...

I may surprise you, but I received a akin feedback from GROM soldiers, with whom, by the way, Eric Lubos is powerfully friends. In their opinion, “Kill the beaver” is the first Polish movie about PTSD – Post-traumatic stress syndrome faced by veterans returning from combat missions. Trying to draw in the script the figure of the main character "Kill the beaver", I imagined that a man marked by war, talented or burdened – depends on how we look at it – a hypersensitivity on the road leading to madness. And that is, of course, the origin of war.

Kill the beaver. Aquaforta Piotr Korczyński

I gotta say, I'm very happy to hear that you're specified an expert in the military as GROM soldiers That's how they read the movie. Anyway, 1 of them here, on the spot, due to the fact that the photos were taken in Popielawach, taught tactical behaviour and utilizing the weapons of Eric Lubos. Today, Eric can do a lot more due to the fact that he's had quite a few training with GROM specialists.

What you can see in the Diable, which has late entered cinemas.

Which I put my hand to, due to the fact that I consulted his script, very good. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I imagine Eric's infallible there.

I “the Devil” have already seen And I confirm, Eric Lubos was perfectly prepared by the specialists for the function of vigilante. But “The Devil” is besides a movie about returning After years in the home parts, to the land of childhood.

You know, I besides experienced a return, of course under different circumstances than the hero of the Devil. It was a return to childhood due to the fact that I spent it in the place we're talking now. And I gotta say, I actually found the same thing in all item I remembered years ago. Although it sounds a small different now, the train whistle I hear from the close Łaznów station. The smells have changed a little.

...

The communicative of your grandpa Jakub Szewczyk is very dramatic, and here I am reminded immediately of your next movie – “The Potato Funeral”.

The grandpa was an highly brave and hard-hearted man; a soldier of the Polish Military Organization, then a seamstress in the 1st Regiment of the Shollezers Józef Piłsudski. For his participation in the charge under Arcelin in 1920 he was awarded the conflict Cross. During planet War II, as head of the National Army district, he went to Auschwitz-Birkenau. He survived the death march in which, by accident, he followed him or before him his future son-in-law and my father – Roman Kolski. Both finished this road at Camp Bergen-Belsen and were liberated there by the British, having no thought that someday their fates would unite. Grandpa returned home in 1946 and weighed 49 kg... It turned out that for this "resurrected" rhyme, nothing was left of the land reformed. This is what I am talking about in the Potato Funeral. Here I will quote an authentic story: erstwhile Grandpa returned to the village, 1 of the inhabitants with the rakes in his hands stood before him – I will not mention his name – and he said, “Oh, the hebrew or thief, for specified Germans kept in camps.” Grandpa ripped the rake out of his hands and knocked almost all his teeth out of his advanced jaw. After that, no 1 commented on his return. Grandpa was a small short, but he had this thing in him that was respectful.

The ID of the POW of Jakub Szewczyk.

As a child, did you announcement post-camp trauma at your grandfather's?

But naturally, there's quite a few screaming at night.

...

The Lord in his films touching the themes of business and war frequently shows this terrible time from the position of the kid exactly. In “Venice” we follow Mark, who escapes the nightmare of war, building a model of the title town of doge in the basement, repeating the spell “I don’t want to be here”. besides in “Pornography” – adaptation of Witold Gombrowicz’s fresh – it is the memory of the daughter of Frederick, who was murdered in the camp, played phenomenally by Krzysztof Majchrzak, that the full story...

I added the "Pornography" subject you mentioned to Gombrowicz's fresh from the memoirs of Calek Perechodnik. Incidentally, it was Krzysiek Majchrzak who guided me to the book of Perechodnik. erstwhile we were working on the script at his house, he was giving me these memoirs. I was pushing them distant until yet Krzysiek categorically said, “Come on, man, read them.” Having read it, I realized that this is simply a résumé that could someway explain Frederick's actions. In Gombrowicz, this character is like Deus ex machine. There was no causal mechanics in it, he was just doing something he was given demiurg, or Gombrowicz. In order to equip Frederick with human rations, I had to look for a résumé for him, and thanks to Krzyśko I found him in the destiny of a Perechodnik.

Who, reasoning he was saving his family, entrusting himself to the German oppressors, actually sentenced her to death.

Yes, it was a dramatic, utmost situation. With Mrs. Hanna Krall, we are now grinding the script – actually ready, which tells a communicative just as dramatic as in Perechodnik's Confessions. I treat this script possibly even in the category of opus magnum – a work summarizing my work. This is something I'm standing in front of right now...

This child's position of war—realened on the 1 hand, due to the fact that it is inactive immature, naively trusting, and on the another hand more dazzling than in adults who, through their experience, can rationalize quite a few war, or at least effort to rationalize themselves—is very credible in your cinema: tangible.

Because I have this position glued to my own heart, due to the fact that I either tell about people very close to me, or give reflections, sparks of their experiences fictional characters. The destiny of my mother, the destiny of a war child, is precisely specified an evidence. I'll tell you 2 things that have affected me very strongly, actually formatting. erstwhile you draw the horizon of the worldview of a man, or simply his humanity, it affects him very many reasons, but there is always a foundation. And in my case, these are the 2 stories. The first concerns my uncle Wacław Shevczyk, Lieutenant “Vehicle” and “Orkan” – for specified aliases he wore during the war and postwar conspiracy. I have dedicated to him 2 films, which we have already mentioned here – “The Potato Funeral” and “The Pardon”.

Lieutenant Wenceslas Szewczyk Orkan.

And the communicative I want to tell you is this: there is simply a war going on, the “Health” is injured and lies hidden in the barn. Grandpa Jakub, the father of Uncle Wenceslas, is in Auschwitz, and Grandma Hania walks all day on ft from Popielaw to Tomaszów Mazowiecki to keep the household alive somehow, and there are inactive Uncle Heniek and my parent Halina, Aunt Stasia, who was already dead. My mom's 10. due to the fact that it's 1942. Aunt Maniusa besides lives in Popielawa, who lives rather well for war conditions. 1 day Aunt Maniusia bakes bread and smells from a large oven spreads all over the village. Aunt calls her parent and says to her, “Here's a bun for Wack”, because, of course, half the village knew that “Health” was hiding in the barn, and it was jointly silent about it. Mom with that fragrant bun was walking, walking... and what came close the barn was that bun she smelled more and more. Finally, she couldn't stand it and ate that bun. It was a yeast bun, most likely with a crumb, smelling, right from the oven...

Granny, returning from Thomasov, saw Halinka crying, walking along the way, not knowing what to do. She admitted she couldn't take it, that the part smelled so good... Then her grandma just wiped her face with her apron, kissed her head, and in a minute, those 20 km, went to Thomasov to exchange something, buy this failure to Uncle Deke to compensate and hug my mother's grief. And she brought Deke bread. This is the destiny of a kid in a war. And my mother's fate, from my heroic point of view. I don't think anything in peculiar has happened, but it's something that truly affected my imagination.

The second communicative happened after the first one, erstwhile the Germans were looking very intensively for Uncle Wenceslas. For safety, my parent was taken distant to her household in Lubochnia and told me that all day she would sit on a large stone and look at the road leading towards the Skerneck Forests – named after the village of Skernek – if she would see my mother, my grandmother. A beautiful man was my grandma Hania... For years I identified myself with this situation, due to the fact that the loneliness of my parent there evoked the memory of my loneliness here in Popelawy. My parents sent me to Popielaw from the large city of Wrocław, and the loneliness was the main substance I experienced. So I felt a partnership, a strong emotional relation with my loved ones from erstwhile they were children.

...

What is felt from your films, but besides from the stories of veterans who were teenagers during the war, is the fact that children are able to adapt faster than adults to the war planet “on the puck” – to the carnival of war.

In my films, I effort to emphasize the thought that children have specified a flexible imagination that they can format – build a foster world.

That's Venice in the basement.

For example.

And what do you think, creating these alternate worlds, in which these children follow: good or evil?

To safety. The point is, in these worlds in which they flee, they are causative, they affect events. And as long as they have control, they believe in this world.

Look at the planet today... How he screams present to remind us what that terrible time of war, occupation, the Holocaust... To quit this ease in dealing with death and talking about it. present death is so crude, so cruel and painful that they are talked about at the same level at which they are informed of the weather for the weekend. After that, there is simply a cut and information is given that so many and so many thousands of people have died in Gaza; again, the cut and a fewer minutes for news about the fresh cosmetics and after that information about the bombing of Ukrainian cities by Russian rockets, during which people died again... So I think that the natural work of artists, people proceeding and seeing more intensely is to capture the essence from this sound of reality and effort to respond to it. make antibodies.

Do you believe art can halt evil?

You know, this is 1 of the foundations that keeps me at the movies. It is simply a naive faith, but if I gave up putting into this dam against the evil of my pebble, the 1 without which this dam may not withstand the force of wickedness, then the full planet will perish – due to the fact that I had doubted one. I know how it sounds, but I'm gonna keep saying it. This is not an answer to the question of whether I believe in the power of cinema, but of believing in the power of an artist's duty, regardless of the circumstances. That's why I stand by my election.

This may sound alternatively arrogant, but with all the experience and professional skills I've acquired, I could shoot a show behind the show and not conflict with the tough stuff. Only that would be a loser. It would besides be to compromise grandmother, grandfather, uncle Wacław...

...

I will go back to the "Revelation" here due to the fact that 1 of the critics who analyzed this movie wrote that you present in it a postwar planet that is simply a desert without God. The evidence of this was to be, among another things, an empty Tabernacle in the church where the Lord's grandparents enter, desiring to bury their son, Wacław Szewczyk, “The Stand”, murdered by a traitor from his ward, who was captivated by UB.

My grandpa was skeptical about faith. I will not say that he lost it, but he asked where God was erstwhile the chimneys of the crematorium in Auschwitz were smoking. But back to that Tabernacle you mentioned... Of course, it is awkward if the manager or screenwriter gives an explanation of the meaning of the scenes that he has brought to life and which already be in cultural circulation. But I'm gonna make this awkward. Namely, the Tabernacle is empty, for the Blessed Sacrament is internal; it is in the heart of men. That's where he hid during the large oppression. These remnants of light, which are a spatter from the Body of Christ, the heroes sewed under themselves, deep into the heart.

When we number the trees in the Garden of the Righteous among the planet Nations in Jerusalem, it turns out that the most is Polish. And not due to the fact that there were the most Jews in our country. That's not why. It's just that so much of the Blessed Sacrament, this spatter from Good was kept in the hearts. In the outside world, God disappeared, but he survived with humans.

He stayed in the people, even if they were skeptical or even measuring the dove with a gun, as in the “Revelation”.

Yeah. In the film, I attributed this motion to my grandma and a fewer another things. She trampled a dead worm that ate her baby, almost seduced German, which means she did things that didn't fit into this beautiful, holy person. It was only erstwhile she suffered any form of conversion that all earlier scenes became relevant. These divine sparks in her heart have rekindled.

Kill the beaver. Aquaforta Piotr Korczyński

This figure of Christ, whose Lord's grandma puts back in the right place, is clearly associated with the scene of the likewise hanging head down the Savior in "Pope and Diamond" by Andrew Wajda.

You hit the spot. It was a conscious bow toward the master.

And the officers of Lt. Ostoi, who bring misfortune to the next owners, associate very powerfully with Lt.

Those shoes were in my life. erstwhile I was a kid, I tried to walk in them. Furthermore, this was besides to be shown in the "Revelation". In the end, this scene did not enter the film, but I took pictures erstwhile Janek, which is me, puts on these shoes and can't walk in them. But after all, he yet made this film, which means that he put on these shoes and walks in them somehow, although he is not comfortable.

There's another very meaningful scene in the film. I mean, the minute your grandma is giving your grandpa a lecture, which an officer should do after the war, that first of all, learn, start a household and live...

Uncle just did. Right after the war, he went to college and from these studies he went back into the woods. However, he could not accept this Poland that appeared, and went to fight for another.

...

The full version of the interview will be published in the quarterly “Army Poland. History’

Jan JAKUB KOLSKI born 29 January 1956 in Wrocław. Director, screenwriter, writer, movie operator, producer, academic teacher (prof. dr hab. Faculty of movie Directing in Lodz). He made over 20 short films, 19 feature films, 5 tv Theatres, wrote 8 books. His films were shown at the most crucial movie festivals in the world, including Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Moscow, Tokyo, Montreal, Shanghai, Karlovy Varys. Winner of many awards, hero of 3 planet retrospectives: the Lincoln Center in fresh York City, India and Taiwan. associate of the Polish and European movie Academy, Knight of the Officers' Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, Order of Ecce Homo, Golden Medal of Honored Culture Gloria Artis, Medal of the Centennial of Recovered Independence.