The camera has always been at home - movie

Mateusz Demski: How do you remember your childhood?

Jan Holoubek: It was very happy and normal.I think Little Jan was a child like any other - all days spent in the yard, I played with my friends, the world seemed carefree and joyful.And yet in some way this atmosphere of the 80s., such subcutaneous social anxiety, penetrated the walls of childhood.Apparently my parents brought this anxiety home, and I instinctively absorbed these emotions, not understanding too many political realities.So this is my memory - on the one hand it was a wonderful time, on the other, paradoxically, very dark.

You say that your parents returned home with some emotions.And how was it with their work?Was life in the Holouble house surrounded by an aura of artistry?

Journalists keep asking me about it, and I repeat over and over again: it was a regular home.Ordinary breakfast, lunch, dinner.There was no atmosphere of the temple of art, parents practiced their profession rather outside the home.Sometimes, of course, they had to prepare for roles.However, this did not paralyze everyday life, they left the house as a kind of enclave.And his father himself, despite his status, was an ordinary household member - he loved to follow all sports competitions on television, with football at the forefront, put it on a lusian, solve crosswords.He devoted himself to ordinary entertainment that each of us has.He did not spread the aura of a great artist around him, he did not think that acting made him better.Like every father, he received me from school, sometimes he cooked something, helped in lessons.You can read about it in Zofia Turowska's book "Gustaw" (margins).

And he really didn't encourage his son to participate in his artistic world?

My parents did not transfer their ambitions to me.Father used to say that it is not worth doing anything at all costs.But I never had any doubt that I would like to take care of it someday.It's hard to be different.The camera always lay at home.We had the first one for a negative 8 mm, as a little boy, of course, I could not use it, but very often I played with her in such a way that I watched through her what surrounds me.I imagined that I was making a movie.Then the parents bought a video camera that could finally be recorded.And in fact, something like this was released in me that for a few years I shot everything that was happening around - family events, trips, short feature films: from horror movies, through criminals, to comedies.It was the purest joy.I don't know if I have had a better fun in my life.

You have turned it into something more than fun.

The older I was, the more I wanted to develop this passion.For four years, I attended a film circle, led by director Józef Gębski.He prepared me for exams for school, he helped at the briefcase, he was also the first person who strongly directed my sensitivity to cinema other than entertainment, which I was soaked.To tell the truth, at home I did not undergo training from art cinema, in my upbringing it was never.My parents never planted me in front of the TV and did not make Antonioni watch.They left the same thing for themselves.

So there was no pressure or expectations on their part, but on the part of the environment - due to the name - probably already?An important step for you was the movie "Sun and Shadow".It so happened that at the beginning of your career you became the director of your own father.

This film came to me in the form of a proposal from TVP.In the first reflex I refused, thinking that I was not intellectually prepared for such a challenge.Make a movie about Gustaw Holoubek, being his son, it seemed too risky to me.But in the end I decided that I would try to face it, making a film not so much about the great artist, the icon of Polish theater and cinema, but above all about my father, which I see him.About a man I knew my whole life, who is now slowly leaving ... I wanted to talk to him about what is most important to him through this film, guided by his son's curiosity.On the screen, the father's partner, mostly silent, is his great friend Tadeusz Konwicki.But the photos on the set were preceded by our intimate conversations, which we had at home in two.In this sense, I receive this film as my meeting with my father - I had the opportunity to raise the most important and basic issues with him for the first time;ask about love, friendship or death.I have never heard the latter word in his mouth before.

As far as I know, your father and Tadeusz Konwicki have been friends for at least 40 years.Konwicki was a regular visitor in your home?

He wasn't a regulator.It seems to me that Tadeusz could have been with us only a few times.But they met with their father every day - first in a cafe, then at dinner.They were really great friends.I was lucky that I knew Tadeusz since my child.After my dad's death, Tadeusz wanted me to take pictures for the film about him "What am I doing here?", Which in turn was directed by Janusz Anderman and Kamila Dreck.For me he was an important man - wise and good, with an extraordinary culture, a sense of humor and intelligence, which I certainly loved in some way.

Jacek Wakar once wrote that you have the impression that he was conducted in a half -voice, without big words, the conversation was the intellectual and artistic testament of Mr. Father.What attitude did he have to do this movie?

The father agreed to this idea uncertainly, because he was afraid of exhibitionism all his life, he avoided him like fire.He claimed that one should not open publicly, reveal personal matters and feelings.And it's not about contact with the media, but about the very approach to art.He professed the principle that the performance, played character are something separate from him.He thought that when leaving the stage, you had to go back to yourself, to life, and entering it, leave this life behind you.It is not about cutting off from your experiences.It is impossible to finally play without your own luggage certain matters, experience and your attitude towards the character.My father probably meant that it is not allowed to play private emotions outside, to show.Anyway, when he saw "Sun and Shadow", he was slightly terrified, but Tadeusz and Edward Kłosiński were with us, also an extremely important man.They calmed him down and said: "It's okay".Then my father gained confidence.I have the impression that he had to hear it from someone like that - not from me, not from my mother, but from someone from the outside.

After the document about your father, you returned to the set as a director a few years later in Mockument "Postcards from the Republic of Absurd".This film probably also contains a personal story-you somehow enliven it the realities of the PRL.Did you, as a child of outstanding artists, bypass this reality somehow?

I do not think so.Let's remember that the peak of luxury that my father could reach then, one of the leading actors of the Polish People's Republic, was a Lada or Polonez car.It may have been something with us, but it was enough to go to the western border so that the difference would become visible.I remember our trip to Austria in the late 1980s.- We drove the highway on the polonaise, we had a gasoline canister in the trunk, so as not to refuel in the West.That was the reality.However, I consider the happiness that I caught the first ten years of my life for communion.Thanks to this, I appreciated what happened after 1989.And I certainly understood it much better than generations born later.Anyway, "Postcards ..." were created with them in mind.

This is an extremely perverse film - we are in 2014 and Poland remains a communist country.Above the center of Warsaw, two palaces of culture rise, young people use the Chinese counterpart of Facebook, and receives cell phones from the assignment.Where does such a vision of reality come from?

I wrote the script for a competition announced by Polish Television on the occasion of 20.anniversary of the round table session.The film was made five years later.I came up with fantasy, speculation, an alternative version of history that will allow contemporary youth to draw in that world.But it wasn't about moving the recipients to the 80s., only the opposite - to transfer the times of the Polish People's Republic to their reality.It is actually a rather bright and unreal vision, because communist countries, e.g..China or Vietnam, they don't look like that today.I just meant to show some absurdities of that time, which for the young viewer were completely incomprehensible.Unfortunately, now I see that this absurdity begins to eat.When I was shooting the scene showing the release of "Dziennik TV."Postcards ..." were somewhat conceived as a satirical and hymoristic film about where we came out.Until suddenly it ceased to be funny.

Do you have no impression that in a sense from that time we never left?And that the transformation did not pass the exam at all?

It was a bit like that everyone was quietly hoping that Poland would become a paradise in just a few years.Many politicians promised it. I do not think so, żeby tak optymistyczny wariant transformacji miał prawo kiedykolwiek się udać.From complete backwardness, in a situation of a nasty crisis, the country was taken over by people who had to make decisions and reforms in instant mode, often improvising.I do not judge them - there are different views, whether it could be done differently or better, today it is easy to criticize it.However, this does not change the fact that the first decade of transformation was particularly difficult for many social strata.

In a sense, a film dedicated to Tomasz Komenda tells about it.

Well, he and his family are victims of the time of transformation.Tomek had this misfortune that he found an exceptionally vile people who decided to put him in prison and tick off his success.But equally important is the fact that he came from a family who had no one to defend, which could not afford to rent a lawyer.We know that some things have not changed in our social tissue since then.There are still deep divisions, unevenness, there is still a system of oppression grown by representatives of the judiciary.Each of us can someday be in Tomek's situation.This is shown by the story of Igor Stachowiak, who in 2016.He died at the police station, electric shut up by policemen.

You chose a difficult topic for your debut.Do you think that was the right decision?

When I got this proposal, I did not realize that social expectations are so huge that the reception would be so wide.In retrospect, I know that I could not imagine a stronger debut - a film with such reach and response that could open his eyes and at the same time had some causative power.We hoped that it would all help Tomek, that something would have something of it, and fortunately it happened to some extent - I want to believe that the premiere of "25 years of innocence" contributed to the acceleration of the end of the process for compensation, which allowed him to start a new start.However, two investigations are still underway - one thing about punishing the real perpetrators of the Miłoszyce crime and the other regarding the abandonment of police and prosecutor's officers, which contributed to the fact that Tomek was wrongly sent to prison.I hope that our film also hit these matters.

And how do you see your future after such a strong debut?

In these days you can't be sure of anything, but I know that if the film about Tomek failed, it would close my way to any future in the director's profession.I am glad that despite the pandemic, when the cinemas remained closed with minor breaks for almost a year, and the cinema industry stands on the verge of collapse, there are streaming platforms on the Polish market that began to intensively realize local productions.We don't really know how much people will take to return to the cinema, how much it will rebuild this trust.At this point, I finished working on the new season of my series "Rojst '97", which will appear on Netfliks in the summer, and I am starting another project, also for Netflix - the miniserial "Great Water" about the flood that visited Wrocław in 1997.I do not want to reveal the action of either one or the other series, but we work carefully on them, to the smallest detail.Quality is a basic value for me.

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Jan Holoubek - (born.1978) A graduate of the Faculty of Film School in Łódź.He collaborated as the author of photos and camera operator in numerous films and series.In 2018.The series "Rojst", of which he is the director and co -writer, premiered on the SHOWMAX platform."25 years of innocence.Tomek Komenda's case "(2020) is his full -length feature debut.The film received the award for the best debut during 45.FPFF in Gdynia and 15 nominations for the Polish Film Awards Eagles.He is currently working on the continuation of the series "Rojst" for Netflix.