through, reminding us that The Case of Pekosiński is also a drama of personal redemption. At the apex of his journey, the repeatedly abandoned Pekosiński, who spent his life seeking a family, offers
shelter to a young pregnant couple. Andrzej Wajda, who likens Królikiewicz’s formal rigor to Peter Greenaway’s, calls this neo-biblical scene one of the most affecting in Polish cinema.
in t e r view with grzegorz królikiewicz
ELA BITTENCOURT: How did you come to make fiction films that employ documentary elements?
GRZEGORZ KRÓLIKIEWICZ: The beginnings are
always mysterious. For me, it was a slow process of writ- ing down my dreams and jotting down ideas. I actu- ally stayed away from filmmaking at first. A student at the Łódź Film School told me about a group of Polish photojournalists associated with the magazine Świat (World). Their work was phenomenal, on the level of British filmmakers such as Basil Wright in his poetic Song of Ceylon or his incredibly concrete Night Mail, or of John Grierson’s Drifters. For me, those photojournal- ists were a revelation. The filmmakers’ hands were tied, because they needed funds from the Communist Party, which required permissions for everything. Press was more versatile. My colleague convinced me that I had to get involved in the visual arts. I moved to Łódź and was overwhelmed by the city. Łódź in those days was a nightmare of ugliness and poverty. It was full of despair. I began taking images of the Łódź Central Station, work- ing with Kiev, a small Soviet camera. My first film in Łódź was a three-minute short based on a dream about a close friend, an alcoholic who was to me like a surrogate brother. I was quite young and naïvely believed that I could cure him through the psychodramatic structure of
EB: Then you came to the real-life story of the Malisz
couple. GK: Juan Torres, a Mexican writer and a friend of
mine, told me about them. I went to Grodzko [the city where the crime took place] to read the judge’s notes. I touched the bullets that the doctor had taken out of the bodies, and went to the building where the murder took place. I felt as if someone were begging me, “Don’t go in.” That’s how I decided to make Through and Through. I went to the court where the process took place, and where Malisz had engraved his name on a bench.
EB: Did your actors also read the transcript of the Malisz trial? GK: Just once, but I took it away from them once we
began working. I wanted the actors to imbue the text with their own experiences. I wanted Franciszek Trzeciak to stop acting Jan Malisz and to instead use himself in the role. I employed a kind of psychodramatic trance to prepare the actors, by asking them about their lives.
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my film, by re-enacting his battles with alcoholism. The result was a mixture of dreams and of an intervention into his life.
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