Interview with Małgorzata Paszko

Arcadia is a documentary impression about the destructive human impact on nature, created with black and white images. There is only one sentence in the entire film: "Watch out".

IAG: What inspired you to make an environmental film?

MP: For many years, the subject of the environment has been extremely important to me, and I knew I would want to make a film about it ever since I started studying at film school. I finally decided that I would take up the subject after the animal rights protest in Warsaw and my visit to the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, where a film with a similar theme was screened, which moved me a lot and didn't let me forget about it for days.

IAG: This isn't a typical environmental documentary. It's really more of an art film, but with an environmental message. What inspired you to take this type of approach?

MP: Around that same time, I came across films like Samsara and Baraka, and Koyaanisqatsi. Each of them has an experimental form of storytelling that captivated me, because of the great power that the images or sound have themselves, and how much they convey to us without imposing an interpretation on the viewer. I wanted to achieve a similar effect in my film and tell the story of environmental issues in a different way from what I had already seen many times.

IAG: What kind of camera did you use?

MP: We used a FujiFilm X-H2S digital camera.

IAG: Did you shoot in black-and-white? Or did you shoot in color and then convert to black-and-white during post-production? 

MP: We decided at the beginning that the film would be in black and white, and that's how we shot throughout. Because the spaces we were shooting in were so different, we wanted to make them to visually match in this way.

IAG: Do you have any advice to people who are debating about whether or not to study film in school? Are you glad you did it? 

MP: I personally highly recommend going to film school, mainly because of the people you can meet there—both the professors and the students you interact with. You form friendships with people with similar interests and meet people in the industry with whom you later collaborate. Of course, it is possible to become a director without film school, but I very much appreciate the time I spent there and the opportunities it gave me.

IAG: Tell us a little bit about your next project.

MP: My next project will be a feature film of about 30 minutes. The story is about two boys from a poor Polish neighborhood who decide to blow up the tenement house they live in including themselves and its residents. It may seem brutal, however, this is just the frame of the story. What I'm trying to explore there is more about what led to this, to tell the story of depression and anger of young adults and how a destructive relationship can affect our life choices. As I love documentaries, here I will also try to create a documentary-based atmosphere, the boys will be recorded on a VHS camera, the cinematography will be dirty and imperfect.

IAG: Last but not least, what are three films that have inspired you?

MP:

• The first is a classic—Bergman's Persona. It’s the film that made me fall in love with cinema. When I saw it for the first time I realized that there is no other medium that so well captures the philosophical themes that interest me. For example, the concept of putting on masks, assuming a certain pose in society, and many other philosophical topics that I had read about in books, but they never described it the way this film conveyed it. In addition, the outstanding cinematography and acting, as well as the Scandinavian atmosphere, only increased my admiration.

• The second film is Korine's Gummo. This film was so different in style from classic cinema and aroused in me many emotions at once, rejection and disgust, sympathy and laughter. Due to the fact that the actors were mostly friends of the director, and he himself appeared in one scene as well, you can feel the incredible honesty and genuineness among the characters there. The film itself is also brilliantly edited and soundtracked. You can see that Korine created it without sticking to any rules, but nevertheless it came out as a legendary work.

• My third choice is Tarkovsky’s Stalker. It captivated me with its amazing cinematography and the main character who guides us through the Zone. This is one of the films that I would describe as poetic. The world created there absorbs us and takes us to an almost fairy-tale, even hypnotizing place. The characters there are certain archetypes that make the story always relevant. I think everyone can discover a part of themselves in this film, stop for a moment, and think about their own desires and meaning.