Bogna Kowalczyk at present works as a inventive artwork director, director, and animator at Warsaw Manufacturing. Since 2009 she has been directing animated movies and music movies and has supported dozens of scholar productions as an animator, CGI skilled, script physician, and assistant director. She has labored with Common, Sony, Netflix, and different main manufacturing corporations.
“Boylesque” is screening on the 2022 Scorching Docs Canadian Worldwide Movie Competition, which is happening April 28-Could 8. Discover extra data on the fest’s web site.
W&H: Describe the movie for us in your individual phrases.
BK: “Boylesque” is a bittersweet story about dwelling life to the fullest regardless of being of a sure age and never conforming to social norms. It’s about taking a affected person and conscious look on hope for a great life, actively looking for love at an aged age, and self-acceptance in a judgmental world.
W&H: What drew you to this story?
BK: Curiosity. Genuine conversations with the protagonist revealed glimpses of the thriller that I felt drawn to research. The remaining was a course of.
W&H: What would you like individuals to consider after they watch the movie?
BK: I would really like them to remain perceptive and reflective at the very least for a couple of minutes. I would like them to go inward and have a dialog with themselves and people who find themselves near them. I don’t need to preach however relatively provoke the viewers and ask questions.
I hope the movie sensitizes our souls at the very least for a number of seconds.
W&H: What was the largest problem in making the movie?
BK: Ageism. It’s a sneaky and very hurtful paradox that we breathe like air. I might clearly sense it within the protagonists. It was one other stage of rigidity we would have liked to ease up with belief. They had been terrified of tokenization, [of being made fun of, of being made into a meme.]
As filmmakers, we put a whole lot of effort into staying open-minded and alert [so we won’t] slip into hurtful stereotypes. We made it a precedence and it has affected the best way we constructed a narrative. For instance, we determined to introduce scenes about love and intercourse later within the story to provide the viewers time to get to know Lulla first, and solely then to deal with the difficult topic.
I believe individuals in a youth-oriented world are terrified of what they will’t management and ageing is likely one of the issues that may meet up with them eventually. It additionally affected our inventive selections: we put additional strain on aesthetics, attempting to extract the great thing about previous pores and skin and wrinkles.
W&H: How did you get your movie funded? Share some insights into how you bought the movie made.
BK: The movie is a Polish-Czech co-production. The main producers are Tomek Morawski and Kasia Kuczyńska from Haka Movies, a Warsaw-based firm, with whom I began this journey. Then HBO Max was the primary companion that determined to again the undertaking, inspired by our pitch at DOCS TO START at Krakow Movie Competition. Subsequent, we gained a Czech co-producer. Bionaut liked the undertaking immediately and was in a position to safe funding from the Czech Movie Fund. On the Polish facet, as many of the capturing was achieved in Warsaw, the Mazovia Warsaw Movie Fund, which helps productions made domestically, joined the undertaking as a co-producer.
W&H: What impressed you to turn into a filmmaker?
BK: I suppose I’m a delicate particular person. Storytelling is my have to replicate, to ask individuals to a dialog. I’m doing a whole lot of issues which might be linked with mindfulness, psychology, philosophy, and art-making, however all of them, together with filmmaking, are about this one factor: this metaphysical, international, intergenerational thought course of and dialog that takes place in tradition throughout us. I really suppose it builds us as a collective and as people. I imagine that other than aggressive, loud voices, we additionally want these delicate appreciations and mind-twisting questions on the one instruments via which we understand, thus create, our actuality: our minds.
Languages used to explain the world, footage used to make templates about actuality and fashions of beliefs we select to stay our lives by, will not be goal actuality however cultural imprints. Filmmaking, and usually content material we see in media, has an enormous affect on it. I wish to play with this concept by sharing my very own doubts and emotions. I wish to ask tough questions myself. It’s typically painful, however it’s additionally thrilling. If somebody can be a part of me on this dialog, I’m glad.
W&H: What’s the worst recommendation you’ve obtained?
BK: Why would I bear in mind? I attempt to bear in mind conclusions from errors, not errors themselves. Disaster creates breakthroughs. I desire to stay with what I realized, not what was hurtful.
W&H: What recommendation do you’ve for different ladies administrators?
BK: If you wish to be attention-grabbing, keep your self. Search inside and be genuine. It’s magnetic and nobody can do you higher than you. Being your self is difficult work at the start and it’s often irritating that you must search solutions inside whereas it appears simpler to undertaking however it offers a lot readability afterward! I want somebody would have instructed me that at the start.
Don’t waste time and get to know your self, observe, replicate and you may be certainly a greater filmmaker. It sounds cliché, however significantly, we are able to inform a narrative in regards to the hardest feelings however I imagine to truly be capable to weave them into the story that’s immersive, we have to have far from them and this comes via going via the center of them inside us.
Additionally, should you really feel you need to be a filmmaker, think about what you’ll really feel whenever you turn into one. Then handle your wants in different methods — fewer frustrations, extra thoughts energy. You are able to do rather more from a spot of achievement. It’s additionally simpler to listen to your individual voice if you find yourself not starved emotionally. That is recommendation for all individuals, it doesn’t matter what gender. Noting defines you other than the belongings you select to outline you. Go inside and belief the journey.
W&H: Title your favourite woman-directed movie and why.
BK: I don’t have a favourite one and this query makes me really feel like I would like to decide on. There are wonderful animators, painters, artists, and filmmakers of all genres they usually all create narratives. After I see a great film, I’m completely satisfied I watched it.
However maybe it’s a possibility to speak about a number of the Polish filmmakers who encourage me. Lidia Duda is such an incredible director together with her painfully genuine narratives and wonderful energy to confront us with actuality in skillful documentary making. Renata Gąsiorowska creates such sensible animated worlds, however I’m additionally impressed by the unbelievable Tomek Popakul, who’s a person however his storytelling is so delicate and magical. Nevertheless, I imagine in constructive discrimination as part of a strategy of getting us used to the brand new — filmmaking is non-gendered for me.
W&H: How are you adjusting to life throughout the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you preserving inventive, and if that’s the case, how?
BK: As all people’s life, mine additionally fluctuates, however I just like the change — even when it’s difficult.
W&H: The movie business has a protracted historical past of underrepresenting individuals of shade onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — unfavorable stereotypes. What actions do you suppose should be taken to make Hollywood and/or the doc world extra inclusive?
BK: I actually respect content material about tradition and sociology. There’s a YouTube channel referred to as “Pop-Tradition Detective” that tackles the thought of hidden misogyny, homophobia, or tokenization of individuals of shade even within the movies that appear to champion the trigger. Inclusivity itself must be sensible and genuine, and this comes with deeper reflection.
The movie business has the identical issues as society. Identical to greenwashing misses the ecology, typically “tolerance” loses the human facet in symbols and the necessity for “wanting good.” We have to get extra educated about ourselves and replicate and solutions will come from genuine locations and they are going to be native, exact, and profitable.
I believe we have to educate — additionally within the movie business — and I’m completely satisfied to see increasingly more panels about difficult topics in movie festivals, for instance. After all, we might all desire to be taught in a means that’s simpler to digest than thick books and lengthy lectures, however for us as filmmakers, lengthy lectures could be the important thing to then passing their affect into what we do in movie and within the business itself. For society, as a lot as books and lectures are wonderful, they’re content material for individuals who already know stuff. I’d like to have extra training about us as people, made for normal viewers.
In my view, a key to evolving as a species is self-awareness, and as I mentioned, content material is an incredible instrument. It’s like a sequence whenever you change a guide right into a lecture, a lecture right into a YouTube video, and a YouTube video into graphics, and so forth. I like this bridge between science and artwork — let’s make it stronger!
Supply: Women And Hollywood