Enthusiasts and the Revolution
I have just come back from Cieszyn and its fourth New Horizons film festival. I expected new films, special events, artistic actions and meetings with filmmakers. Being prepared for all this and experiencing it is different, though. Especially when not everything happens as planned. One day, for example, between the screenings, I stumbled upon Franciszek Dzida. Tall, slender, he was sitting in a cafe, talking on the mobile; seeing him there was enough to make me happy. A living legend! Franciszek Dzida, amateur filmmaker, one of the people whose activity is documented at the Enthusiasts exhibition in the Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw. During two evenings in Cieszyn seven of his pictures were shown.
Why was I so glad to see Franciszek Dzida in Cieszyn and why the term “living legend”? This is partly a result of the abovementioned exhibition as well as of Edwin Bendyk’s article entitled Faust and the Revolution in the latest issue of Fluid magazine (7/2004). The exhibition in the CCA Ujazdowski Castle has been designed as an overview of amateur film clubs, which have been active in Poland between 1950s and 1970s. The films assembled at the exhibition differ both in the techniques applied and the level of professionalism, but all have been created by cinema devotees, for whom filmmaking was often a way to make life more meaningful. Among several dozen films collected at the show, those by Dzida are undoubtedly distinct. This passionate director still organises social actions and continues his work.
The text by Edwin Bendyk allows to look both at the exhibition and the phenomenon of amateur filmmaking from an interesting perspective. After reading it, one feels happy to see Franciszek Dzida in a neutral environment, outside the cinema, the way one feels proud to see someone special who shaped an important part of history. Artists like Dzida have become a model for the character Filip Mosz from Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Amator.
Bendyk does not devote a lot of attention to the exhibition itself. Instead, he takes a look at the work of amateur directors as a phenomenon belonging to specific times and relates it to the theme of revolution. Bringing the figure of Faust in the title of the article, Bendyk refers to the fate of the “enthusiasts” after 1989, when their achievements have been repeatedly questioned. They were accused of bargaining with the officeholders, conforming to the expectations of the partisan circles; in general, selling their souls to the devil under the guise of artistic creation. Bendyk does not strive to resolve nor develop this problem, only suggesting that it might be seen differently in relation to contemporary phenomena like sponsoring, advertising or product placement.
Bendyk is interested in something else. The article points out that “enthusiasts” managed to retain a certain kind of dissimilarity, without which the 1989 revolution would not have succeeded. In the times when these amateur artists were shooting films, one either used to take part in marches of May 1st or anti-system manifestations. In both cases, one was just a part of homogenous crowd. Even if a journalist from abroad picked a worker, dissident, emigrant or communist, they merely represented, says Bendyk, figures of a Worker, Dissident, Emigrant or Communist. The “enthusiasts” marked their individuality by creating something unique which was outside the official division – “Us” and “Them”: culture. They emphasized being instead of having. Bendyk cites Franciszek Dzida: “We have changed just like it was shown in »Amator«. After Filip directs the camera on himself, the camera begun to record »a life of his own«; this has changed him forever”.
By attaining individuality, the “enthusiasts” have attained freedom. Bendyk argues that the truth of their work “is not a feature of any political system, but an achievement of autonomous individuals, who shape the reality through their creative actions”. The revolution is only a momentary strife, a turbulence that allows to alter the existing order. However, a new order not necessarily mean improvement. Seen from this perspective, revolutions would not be perceived important. What really matters, says Bendyk, is the autonomous individual and his search for freedom.
Franciszek Dzida, whom I saw in Cieszyn, is one of such autonomous individuals; someone who has been working for his identity in an ontological void and who, in a certain way, has affected the course of history. Therefore his presence inspired my great enthusiasm.
Agnieszka Kozłowska
Translated by Marta Malina Moraczewska
Discussed journals: Fluid