Jacek Blawut is one of the most renowned Polish cameramen and documentary directors. He was born in 1950 in Zagorze Slaskie. In 1982 he graduated from the Cinematography Faculty at the National Film Television and Theatre School in Lodz. He has lectured in schools of cinematography in Berlin, Hannover, Torun and Warsaw (the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing). During 20 years of John Paul II’s papacy, Blawut was a cameraman filming his pilgrimages. Since 2003 he has been a member of the European Film Academy. He has also been a tutor at the the international documentary film workshops, Dragon Forum, since 2005. The recipient of numerous awards, Jacek Blawut has directed such documentaries as Lump of Sugar (1987), A Monastery (1987), The Abnormal (1990), I Had a Friend (1996), The Country of Birth (2003), I’m an Alcoholic (2003), Born Dead (2004), The Crowned Rat (2004), The Warrior (2006).
Mr. Blawut arrived in Kyiv as a member of the jury of the International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival. He also brought a retrospective of his movies. The film Lump of Sugar has no plot, it is a beautiful and, at the same time, tragic film about horses that die during the races. Born Dead is almost a miracle play, which tells the story of the regeneration of a hardened criminal through his work with special needs-people. The audience was most impressed by the film The Crowned Rat , the sad story of an alcoholic’s self-destruction.
Our conversation took place after Blawut gave a master class in Kyiv’s House of Cineatographists.
What were your first steps in cinema?
“I played in a movie for the first time at the age of six. By the age of 14 I had already played in eight movies. I was going to become an actor, following the desires of my mother. Thus, at first I tried to get into acting. Fortunately, I failed.”
Why was it fortunate for you?
“Because actors make up the lowest rank in cinema. During my childhood I saw how important the work of cameramen really is, how everything depends on them. Only they know what is going inside, and everyone appeals to cameramen as if they were the last instance. Therefore I thought it would be better for me to choose this profession. I passed the entry exams to the Film Television and Theatre School in Lodz, and received a diploma of a live-action cameraman. However, after graduation I became focused on directing and making documentaries. Nevertheless I worked for a couple of years as a live-action cameraman.”
What film directors have you worked with?
“We have, so to speak, a black horse of Polish cinematography – Marek Koterski. I have worked as a cameraman in several films of his, including the latest, Day of Wacko. I have also had an opportunity to work with Krzysztof Kieslowski while filming The Decalogue. Yet I had to decide whether I wanted to become a live-action cameraman or to direct documentaries. I chose the latter.”
How do you start working on a film?
“At first, you should do everything to make people trust you. You cannot come with a camera straight away, you should talk to the protagonists first. This step is the most important one. You cannot just ask questions, you have to reveal your own secrets. The more you reveal, the more people will reveal themselves to you. In order to receive feedback, you should give something. It is not complicated. It is not the director who decides when to begin the shooting, but the hero. When he says, ‘I am ready, let’s make the film. Let’s do this – even if I don’t know what you will be shooting and what you have invented. I want you to start shooting.’ Nothing more than that. And you do not lose contact with the hero after the shooting is over. Very often such people stay in my life, we communicate and consult with each other.”
How do you find protagonists for your films?
“You see, you may have a hero who has blown up 40 tanks, brought down five planes, but nobody wants to listen to him. And there are people who don’t have anything to tell at first glance, but you look at them and your eyes refuse to budge. It happens the same way with live-action movies: a talented actor can save even a bad script. In the documentary films, the leading hero has the greatest prerogative as an actor.”
So, how did you select the hero for The Crowned Rat?
“It was love at first sight.”
And the film Born Dead? The boy has real charisma, it is hard to believe that he is not a professional actor.
“I was shooting the film in a prison and institutions where inmates help people with special needs, but I did not see anyone who could tell a story. None of them had the magnetism needed for this. After nine months of futile search, when I had already lost hope, I was walking along a corridor and through a door left slightly ajar I saw Robert with his wonderful, unusual eyes and understood: okay, it’s him, let’s start from the beginning. During the shooting period he underwent striking changes: at first he was a bandit, a troublemaker, and in the end he is almost an angel. I am very happy that my film changed his life. This is incredible. He would have died if not for the film. By now he has played in four live-action films and is saving up money for a wedding. I am going to be his best man.”
When telling a person’s story, how strictly do you follow the script? Is there any place at all for a script in documentaries?
“The script plays a very important role. Some people can work using their intuition and be successful. Of course, time brings its own corrections, but I always prefer to have a plan, because then we know why and where we are going. Besides, should we lose our way, we will have this lighthouse to guide us, and allow us to tell the story in a better way.”
Did it ever happen that your initial plan was totally ruined by unexpected circumstances?
“The film Lump of Sugar about horse races in Slovakia, in Pardubice, started with me meeting the hero. He came from the Caucasus, whence he moved to Poland with his family, and graduated from a cavalry school. He also took part in those obstacle races. This was an unusual man, born on a horse and even looking like one. No horse fell or died under him during his whole career. At the beginning I had a very nice material, featuring him sitting in front of the camera and telling us about the races. He had a bridle in his hands and oscillated like he was sitting in the saddle and said, ‘Now I’m sitting on the horse and see an obstacle. I tap the horse in the side and ask him whether he sees the obstacle and whether everything is all right. The horse pricks up his ears and replies, Yes, man, everything’s okay, let’s go on. When there’s 20 meters left to the obstacle I ask him again whether he sees it, and he replies again that everything’s fine, no problem. I had to repeat the question, as horses have short memory.’ But only when I came to the races, placed five different cameras, I saw what was really going on there. And although I had had a thoroughly prepared script about the main hero before that, I had to choose whether to make the film I had prepared or the film I saw.”
Could not you combine these two things?
“If I showed the hero and the dying horses at the same time, I would have killed him. I thought that I had to do something concerning those races, but this could not be the way it was, I had to protest against it. I made a synthetic film, which is my only film against man.”
What idea was guiding as you were making The Crowned Rat?
“Above all, I was asking me the question, ‘Why are my friends dying? Why people around me, for example, talented cameramen, cannot drink alcohol without ruining their health?’ When I offered to go drink beer somewhere after work, such a person would reply that he could not because as a result he would drink heavily for the next two weeks and end up in the hospital. When we see somebody lying near a kiosk, he does not seem a man to us anymore. We feel higher and better. However, we don’t know whether the person was wise and vulnerable at some point, and s/he is lying here exclusively because of his/her vulnerability. For nobody wants to become an alcoholic. I was shooting this film on my own, without a crew. I took a bag from home, and like a doctor, got in the car and went to see how Michal’s things were. I dedicated a lot of time to him and did not notice how he started to drag me in.”
What do you mean?
“An alcoholic does not draw people into alcoholism, but makes people dependent on him. Everyone starts to sink around him, his family and friends. For quite a long time I did not see anyone or anything besides him, I answered his every call. I went to see him whenever he wanted. My wife and children constantly noted that he was cheating on me, and I replied, ‘No, this is really a dramatic situation, he cannot be doing that.’ But they insisted. You could see in the film how he started stealing some of my things and invented stories. I must admit that alcoholics are the best actors in the world, only they can manipulate people so well. They all could open their own schools of acting. They are constantly seeking ways to get money, from their acquaintances and friends, and they are doing so in a really brilliant way.
“There were even ridiculous moments: I bought sausage for him, a dry one so that it would not spoil, as he did not have a fridge. However, a saleslady told me later, ‘Don’t do this. When you leave he will return and will sell everything in front of the shop, but at a lower price.’ Then I began to buy sliced sausage. But he would also sell it.
“After all, a hospital resident doctor noted that I must stop, ‘Jacek, stop it. You may soon become the hospital’s patient yourself. If he says he wants to come to the hospital, he should do this himself. You should not be resolving his problems, if he does not want you to.’ I replied, ‘A man is dying, I must do something.’ ‘There are two ways. Either he sinks to the bottom, bounces back from it and swims out, or he will die.’ This is actually the problem with documentary films. During the first month of shooting I was doing this as a professional, and I was actually a film director for Michal. In the first scenes you can see that when asked in the hospital who is sitting nearby, he replied, ‘An acquaintance of mine,’ whereas in the end, when asked who is the closest person to him, he answers, ‘Jacek.’ One should not step over the threshold in such a situation and start communicating with the protagonist as a person, and we stepped over this threshold. It was only us two, him and me, the camera did not disturb us. When you start speaking with a man informally, like, ‘you, Jacek,’ and ‘you, Michal,’ you can no longer look in the objective and set the light, the sound...
“You should look the person straight in the eyes, so that they understand that you hear them, that you are not simply a journalist who has come to gather material and disappear in two hours.”
When did you finally lose faith on Michal?
“I must say, when I was shooting The Crowned Rat, I all the time believed that he would finish his studies, that his wedding would be the last scene, that I would be able to drag him out of that foulness. He was a very intelligent person, he almost finished his studies at the university. I was waiting for a miracle, when I went on trips with him, when we were seeking God, when he got a job. But a month before his death I lost faith in him, when I saw him on a railway station, all swollen. This was when it happened.”
What did you feel when you learned about his death?
“You know, when I told my wife at home that Michal died, she answered, ‘He does not suffer anymore, now he feels good. This is a good ending.’ And I felt myself a free man. I must say that I will never in my life touch this topic again, because it has cost me too much.”
Are there any things you forbid yourself to do?
“I don’t support filming dead people, so I had a problem when I learned about Michal’s death. Many people came to the funeral to show their last respects to him. Many people liked him. The coffin was closed. When the mortuary service asked whether we want to look at Michal to bid farewell to him, because he looked well, I thought, ‘Should I shoot this?’ And it seemed to me that I was the only man to do this. Nobody except for me could do it. In general, we have the following problems with documentary films: to shoot or not, how to shoot it, whether to carry a camera all the time with you, or take it out for special events. Once I wrote a sort of documentary director’s Decalogue – like Lars von Trier wrote his Dogme in his time – rules we cannot transgress. You should decide for the man you are filming what to show on the screen. The person may like everything, but only you should decide, because you are responsible for the hero. His acquaintances and close ones may see the film. He may not understand that he can offend these people in certain moments. There are directors who play this game, but I don’t belong to them.”
For how long do you make a film?
“I must admit that I never work fast. I was making The Warrior for five, The Crowned Rat – three years. It takes me at least two years to make a film, because besides filming myself, I also do the editing.”
Why?
“I cannot imagine me gathering everything for so long and giving it to a person to cut it and later tell me, ‘Here you are, have a look.’ Besides, my conscience prevents me from inviting a film editor, as I film a lot. I shot 200 hours for The Crowned Rat. Is it possible to invite a man to watch all this, and lock him in this kind of prison? And later you will have to pay for the work. So, I wake up in the morning, sit down at the editing block, my wife sitting behind my back, — she always watches together with me, and I wait whether she pushes me in the back, because she is the only person I allow to say whatever she wants.”
How does a documentary film director earn his living? Do you ever work on several films at a time?
“A maximum of two films at a time. Of course, if I made only one film in five years, I would starve to death. By the way, I want to warn you: if you want to make documentaries – you will not be able to make a living from it. Don’t live in such illusions. I have frequently made some money on the side, working as a cameraman in series or live-action films, because it is easy to earn money in this branch. This allowed me to dawdle with my own films for a very long time. At the moment I try to find producers and budgets that would bring good money. And sometimes they do.”
Your films are tangibly pessimistic. Will you do something less gloomy?
“In reality I try to take hard topics and present them in the easiest way possible. I have made a lot of films about people who have development defects and focused on their sense of humor, and the easiness you feel when communicating with them. We often make the mistake of not distinguishing between people with defects and the mentally ill. I have met gentlemen who were sure that their children cannot play in a sandbox with a child inflicted with a Down syndrome, because they may get infected. I started to shoot this kind of films 20 years ago, when this topic was a taboo. I wanted to gain social sympathy and understanding for such people. Only afterwards I started to make films about what we can get from them. I assure you we can receive much more than we can give. They have pure feelings, they calculate nothing. Actually, those are very pure people. They can touch you in such a nice way, and in an exclusive manner. One can learn a lot from them, about expressing one’s feelings. I have made these films not only out of compassion, but to learn from them. It only seems to us they are unhappy. This is not true. They are happy.”
In conclusion, please tell us what is making documentary films for you?
“It is not movie making. It is getting involved with someone’s life. And someone’s life gets involved with yours. It is not drama, but just life.”
