The Walbrzych Notebook
August 21, 2010 No CommentsScreening:
Wednesday, September 8 at 6:00pm ~ Free Event!
Genre: Culturally-Inclined Experimental Documentary
Total Runtime: 72 mins
The Walbrzych Notebook is a sort of anthropological portrait of the Polish town of Walbrzych, a former mining site active until the 90s, today in crisis, due to the closing up of the mines and the consequent firing of hundreds of workers. The film is conceived like a sort of music composition, a score combining natural sounds, speeches, instrumental music, as well as images.
Medium Synopsis
The Walbrzych Notebook is a sort of anthropological portrait of the Polish town of Walbrzych, a former mining site active until the 90s, today in crisis, due to the closing up of the mines and the consequent firing of hundreds of workers. The film is conceived like a sort of music composition, a score combining natural sounds, speeches, instrumental music, as well as images.
The film, divided into several episodes, some of which can be considered as authonomous standalone movies, includes excerpts from the two previous videos Czarna Madonna (2004/2005) and Four Studies On Location And People (2005/2008).
As the previous Chiayi Symphony (2006/2007), The Walbrzych Notebook 2004/2009 can be considered a sort of visual-sound diary; everyday life sequences are reinterpreted as pure actions and tranformed into surrealistic paintings melted down into a sort of long audio-visual stream-of-consciousness; the soundtrack, scored for electric guitar, natural sounds, wind and percussion instruments, strongly contributes to move the film on the oneiric level. The final result is an anthropological representation of a labirynth where from time to time people’s private actions and stories rise up to become universal. A meditation about action, stasis, doing and undoing, environment, daily rites and religious trust.
The Walbrzych Notebook stays halfway between a documentary and a video-art project, an extended music composition and a sound-image performance. Entirely produced by S.G. the film is his first feature.
Long Synopsis
The Walbrzych Notebook is a sort of anthropological portrait of the Polish town of Walbrzych, a former mining site active until the 90s; after a period of crisis, due to the closing of the mines and the consequent firing of hundreds of workers, the city starts today to show some signs of renewal. The film focuses on spaces and people moving inside this reality, it explores the effects, but avoids any kind of historical or scientific speculation on what has happened; more than a real documentary, the film looks like a painter’s draft book, a representation of a place and a time, filtered by the eyes and the ears of a visual-sound artist. In fact the film is conceived like a sort of music composition, a score combining natural sounds, speeches, instrumental music, as well as images.
The film, divided into several episodes, some of which can be considered as authonomous standalone movies, includes excerpts from the two previous videos Czarna Madonna (2004/2005) and Four Studies On Location And People (2005/2008).
As the previous Chiayi Symphony (2006/2007), The Walbrzych Notebook can be considered a sort of visual-sound diary; everyday life sequences are reinterpreted as pure actions and tranformed into surrealistic paintings melted down into a sort of long audio-visual stream-of-consciousness; the soundtrack, scored for electric guitar, natural sounds, wind and percussion instruments, strongly contributes to move the film on the oneiric level. The final result is an anthropological representation of a labirynth where from time to time people’s private actions and stories rise up to become universal. A meditation about action, stasis, doing and undoing, environment, daily rites and religious trust.
The Walbrzych Notebook stays halfway between a documentary and a video-art project, an extended music composition and a sound-image performance. Entirely produced by S.G. the film is his first feature
The Testament (Part 1) Zofia is at home, alone; she is knitting and wondering. Then she starts a long slow trip to the graveyard where Mieczyslaw, her husband, is buried; Mieczyslaw’s voice-off holds an intense monologue against priests and church. The landscape changes from springtime to winter.
Urban Knots Some images of the streets of Walbrzych are overlapped in an odd compositive game. A long trip by car in black and white. The same streets at night time. City as a composition of images, natural sounds and instruments.
Visiting Families A video puzzle of footage shot while visiting families. Drinking, chatting, eating. Old Polish traditional songs accompany the game.
The Box A couple of interviews to Jurek and Ewa, an elder man and his wife, about their past lives, are interpoled by a surreal sequence describing Jurek’s walk to an old mausoleum on the hills around the city of Walbrzych. A bird breaks a net and flies away freely from the mausoleum.
Tourist Guide – Michal, a boy 13 years old is the youngest tourist guide in Poland. He speaks about Walbrzych and leads us touring into the city: the old market square, today restored, the coal deposit area, the Church of Angels etc.
Trust – A priest sings the old Polish song Czarna Madonno re-arranged as a pop song and interpreted in a surrealistic tv-recital atmosphere. An army of priests in uniform celebrate the catholic mass in pomp of colours. The picture slowly detunes as in an old tv, and dissolves into a bundle of electric waves.
Return Ticket – A slow and hypnotic endless winter trip by train from a big city (Wroclaw) to Walbrzych. A subjective walk through the old centre of Walbrzych, not yet restored, reveals a sort of post-industrial desolated landscape, made of fatiscent palaces; the camera moves like an eye exploring a deserted labyrinth, underlined by a soundtrack made of foot steps in the snow, ice sounds, objects falling down. Then the trip back by train. Little stations, snow landscapes, passengers’ thoughtful faces slide away like a film on a screen.
The Testament (Part 2) – Winter time. Zofia visits Mieczyslaw in the graveyard. Mieczyslaw goes on with his monologue against the church. Zofia cleans the tomb; suddenly it is springtime. Mieczyslaw asks where he goes when he is in Heaven. Zofia slowly goes away from the graveyard on her husband’s final existential question: “Do you really believe in such bullshit?”
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