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IFFR 2017

A Heart of Love: Art, love and music in Warsaw

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- Being presented in Rotterdam's Bright Future is the latest film by Lukasz Ronduda, an aesthetically-pleasing and reflective piece based on the lives and art of Wojtek Bąkowski and Zuzanna Bartoszek

A Heart of Love: Art, love and music in Warsaw
Jacek Poniedzialek and Justyna Wasilewska in A Heart of Love

Lukasz Ronduda’s film being presented in the Bright Future section of the International Film Festival Rotterdam is called A Heart of Love [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, and is a loose representation of the intimate relationship between Wojtek Bąkowski and Zuzanna Bartoszek, two artists who live and work in Warsaw. 

The film unfolds around the emotional and artistic link between the pair and their reciprocal influence on one another, exploring the borders between art and love and investigating the limits of an emotional relationship at the mercy of the forces of the act of creation.

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The symmetry between the art and lives of the two protagonists is reflected on screen, with symmetrical and linear compositions accompanying their wanderings between the clubs, shops and art galleries that act as counterbalances for their claustrophobic arguments in his apartment; alternating between closed and open spaces in this way allows the film to escape the somewhat implied static nature of Bąkowski and Bartoszek’s art.

Another theme broached by the film is the relationship between the generations born during and after communism, another difference between the two protagonists in a contemporary Poland overrun by things, and how Zuzanna Bartoszek manages to transform things into art rather than make art into things: having all these household appliances switched on at the same time constitutes a waste of energy that shows there are just as many contradictions in invasive consumerism as there were in soviet communism, and Ronduda shows us this not only through the art of the pair, but with his own as well, which is full of stylistic and inventive flourishes: symbolic is the scene in which Bartoszek greets each and every commercial brand in the shops on the streets of Warsaw one by one, finally free to buy what she wants.

All this is set against the imposing music and poetry of Bąkowski, dark and metallic, with mantras repeated in an obsessive way that leaves the viewer powerless, transporting them into the sterile world of shopping centres: the writer does the opposite however, recycling and mixing sounds in his very own way of seeing the world, an original and organic vision that is served up to us with all the beauty of the images.

If these are the artists who live in Warsaw and A Heart of Love is the result, a shiny yet bleak future awaits Polish art and film everywhere.

The film is produced by Kuba Kosma for Serce, which is also handling sales.

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(Translated from Italian)

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