Several People, Little Time

Colour, 35 mm
Poland, 2005, 110 min
IP – International premiere
Section: Official Selection - Competition

Synopsis

Warsaw during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Hard times and the “literary Tuesdays” of the poet Miron Bialoszewski define the interior drama of the blind Jadwiga Stańczak. The ageing woman, burdened with a tyrannical father, offers her services to the self-centred Miron. She copies down his texts from a tape recorder, organises his schedule and his trips. He is fascinated by her pragmatism and her way of perceiving the world she cannot see with her eyes. Depressed by his sense of the pettiness of the time, and also by his different sexual orientation, and obsessed by the power and beauty of words, Miron urges Jadwiga to write herself. He becomes a merciless critic of her poetry but, in fact, it is later the blind woman who, in her “Diary for Two”, conveys with unusual tact the regenerative meaning of a life completely given up to art. The film, dominated by the performance of actress Krystyna Janda, is based on this testimony to the spiritual harmony of psychologically ill-assorted individuals.

About the director

Andrzej Barański (b. 1941, Pińczów, Poland) studied direction at the PWSFTViT in Lodz (1973). He made 30 short films that won various prizes at film festivals, and which concentrate on the fates of ordinary people, seeing moral laws and values as the only means of self-preservation in the face of life’s tribulations. Exploration of human potential and human defeat as people try to retain their loyalty to these principles also forms the main theme of his feature films, such as At Home (W domu,1975), Free Moments (Wolne chwile, 1979), A Provincial Woman (Kobieta z prowincji, 1984), Taboo (Tabu, 1987), The Peddlar (Kramarz, 1990), On the River That Isn’t There (Nad rzeką, której nie ma, 1991), Bachelor Life in a Foreign Country (Kawalerskie źycie na obczyźnie, 1992), Two Moons (Dwa ksieźyce, 1993), Horror at Merry Marsh (Horror w Wesołych Bagniskach, 1992), The Day of the Big Fish (Dzień wielkiej ryby, 1996), and All the Saints (Wszyscy święci, 2002).