- Venue
- Cinema City
- Location
- East England
In Cinema City’s screen 2 auditorium we were an audience of limited capacity but hopefully maximum interest; anyway this didn’t seem to faze Amanda Geitner (Head of Collections and Exhibitions at the Sainsbury Centre of Visual Arts) as she warmly welcomed us giving a brief but thorough introduction to the three female Polish artists and their work we were about to see. I must give her ten out of ten for pronunciation and memory skills, as I have now found Polish names are notorious for not tripping off the tongue easily.
Not being too knowledgeable on contemporary Polish art and having never written a review before I thought it a matter of some urgency to visit the Sainsbury Centre’s exhibition ‘Take a Look at Me Now’ the catalyst for this evening’s event. This was to prove invaluable, not only for contextualizing the films but also resulting in being able to compare how the environment affects the viewer’s response to viewing film work, as two of the pieces shown in the gallery were later shown at Cinema City. I was suddenly aware how much I had missed in the gallery space compared to the cinema auditorium. I guess this is hardly surprising as ultimately the cinema is the arena for which these young contemporary Polish artists had made these pieces.
Being a modest audience we were encouraged to gather together for a more intimate affair, so having re-settled in our seats and slightly closer to the screen (and each other) the evening started with a film by Katarzyna Kozyra entitled Summertale. This is one I had previously seen in the gallery space and had thoroughly enjoyed, watching it twice. However in the darkened auditorium subtle nuances and sounds I had missed heightened and enhanced the dark ‘Brothers Grimm’ like story making it even more appealing. It must be said when you’re viewing a film containing tinkling music, no dialogue, a transvestite, the artist dressed as Alice in Wonderland and five vertically challenged women dressed like Heidi hacking people to death the experience is most definitely magnified in a small dark almost empty room rather than a large bright exhibition space.
Checking the audience had recovered sufficiently from the blood splattered ending of the ‘fairytale’ we continued our Polish film journey with Tanagram by Anna Molska.
We were suddenly transported from the ending of a tranquil (if gruesome) fairytale to the rousing sounds of the Red Army Choir taking me some time to mentally adjust, however the sight of two extremely well toned young men in nothing but leather jockstraps and gladiatorial looking helmets soon focused my attention.
This again was a piece I had seen in the gallery, although with no seating I had not lingered long, however it must be said there is a fine vantage point in the café where you can enjoy a nice cup of tea whilst watching these two young bodies manoeuvering around each other. Tanagram is an old Chinese tile game and consists of seven geometric shapes which you move around to reproduce a new shape and in Molska’s film these pieces were enlarged to furniture sized objects. The film I felt was the most powerful and reflective with the artist looking back at her Soviet controlled Poland. It has a real sense of the constructivism art movement and macho power struggles of communist controlled countries but this was gilded by the young artist’s contemporary playful and tongue in cheek look at her own country’s political history.
Unfortunately we encountered some technical difficulties with Molska’s other film Work & Power (perhaps Gremlins from the Kremlin?) leaving us to postpone this till the end of the evening.
We resumed with the longest offering of this Polish evening with work by artist Zorka Wollny called Daughters, a 40 minute piece which initially I found poignant and sensitive although perhaps slightly too long. I shall blame most of this on my dyslexic brain as it struggles with subtitles – only able to concentrate either on the image or the words and slow to bring them both together. Being female (as was the majority of the audience), having two older sisters and also presently living in a three generational household with my mother and son under the same roof, I found this work extremely relevant, interesting and thought provoking. As the title Daughters suggests Wollny’s work is concerned with interrelations between mothers and daughters from both perspectives and how history often repeats itself through social and cultural influences.
In the bar after the screenings I learnt that a large proportion of this film was actually autobiographical adding another layer to the film and to a degree answering some of my unanswered questions.
With equipment cooled, cleaned and checked we were able to revisit Molska’s second film Work & Power. A split screen piece, one half showing Polish farm labourers constructing a section of stadium seating in a cold muddy field and stating their names when the structure was finished, whilst the other screen was filmed upside down inside a pristine squash court being filled noisily with white painted tennis balls. The opposing images were fascinating if a little confusing but the contrasts of noise, action and camera angle were all visually arresting and the length of film was such that it gave you time to contemplate the deeper message in the title ‘work and power’, highlighting the cultural shift from communist drudgery to a freer form of consumerism.
So there we have it an evening of bloody dwarfs overlaid with homoerotic movements mixed with pristine bouncing balls and mud with a large shot of female relationship angst. All in all a very stimulating and memorable event – thank you for the free tickets a-n and I look forward to the next Sainsbury Centre screening.
