Photo by Keith Van Wetter 2000

General Facts and a Bit of Philosophy

The first phase of Dream Circle's existence lasted from the latter half of 1998 until the first half of the year 2000. With the production of the company's first project well in progress, the differences, creative and otherwise, led to a change of personnel.

I am working again with my friend Keith Van Wetter. Keith is a musician but he also works behind the camera and has been helping with other aspects of our company. We met at our art school. He was a funny guy eating a big carrot in class; I was a strange foreigner who didn't understand much of what was said and was laughing at inappropriate times. I now see our collaboration as a reaction to the art school experience, where art is made to be irrelevant. I am also working with another friend, Lia Craven, who just graduated from the same school. She majored in photography and video and is now taking filming classes at Seattle Film Institute.

Together, Lia, Keith and I are forming a very small crew of digital videographers. To succeed each one of us has to be committed; each one of us has to feel as if it were his or her own film. We have to pursue skills in many areas associated with the production, such as camera work, acting, sound recording, postproduction, research on equipment and services, as well as financing. With the sense of responsibility and commitment shared by every member of the crew, such a small unit is capable of achieving good results and even inventing some new ways in which a motion picture could be made.

I have always believed in collaboration. Before I came to the U.S. (on January 18 1995) I was fortunate to have met a group of people, mostly about my age, with whom I was able to create the most wonderful kind of art: Art for art's sake. This was a very important experience for understanding the power of art and friendship and to be able to be inspired by life and the simple things. I still collaborate with my Polish friends each time I visit them and even when I am in the US- through writing letters and sending e-mails. In my painting "Happiness" I tried to convey the sense of harmony and happiness that can be generated by friendship and imagination (and therefore, art). It also speaks of childlike innocence and perhaps is able to communicate my ideals better than any words I could put on this page. "Happiness" seems to disarm some people: they look at it and forget why they were worried or upset. The simple things are the ones that most often escape our attention.

In The Beginning. . .

By mid-1998 I was strengthening my English skills, drawing, writing, as well as preparing for prospective projects in Poland. I had moved to a different apartment, which I enjoyed much more than the previous one; it was closer to school and closer to the city life I was used to. Keith was recording music with his new music partner, Aria Mirzazadeh. After they finally finished their long recording session, I had a chance of listening to the music and decided that it seemed to be rather different from the stuff I usually go for (like -let's say- Frank Zappa, or King Crimson). I volunteered to help with the music video anyway. I thought I knew something about video; I didn't. Instead Aria surprised me with his deep interest in cinema. He introduced me to a book titled "Sculpting in Time," by the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, and in it I found something that I always felt was missing from most of the films I had a chance to see on television. With the discovery of such directors as Tarkovsky, Bergman, Breson, or Godard, I found that somebody was thinking in ways similar to mine. Later on during the summer of 1998 I was sitting at a restaurant table in Krakow, Poland with my friend Ula, recalling some great cinematic moments of Tarkovsky's "Solaris." I was moved beyond pretence (incidentally Krakow is the city in which Stanislaw Lem, the writer of the novel "Solaris" lives).

The Birth of the Motion Picture

I met Ula in the summer of 1997, just before the biggest flood of the millennium covered our city, Wroclaw. January 1999 was the first time I had a video camera with me in Poland. After I returned to the US, the footage that interested Aria the most was the footage of Ula. She wasn't afraid of being filmed and the camera liked her in return. The footage captured our friendship, its playfulness and perhaps a sense of wonder: we see each other only from time to time, living with the memory, wondering what each other is doing, what has changed, and what has stayed the same.

Aria decided to put aside his other cinematic ideas and to work on a piece, which would be loosely based on the aforementioned footage, to be used in the motion picture as a form of "video postcards" sent from Poland to the U.S. These postcards would be the only link between the character living in the U.S. (it was determined that he would be played by myself) and Ula. This relationship would serve as a pretext for discussing bigger issues such as dislocation, intolerance, hatred and wars. It seems that Aria wanted the motion picture to be a very elaborate set of references to different cultures and events in history; a work full of symbolism. I saw a potential for something more simple (in many ways), yet compelling.

Despite my initial concerns, I was very pleased with the first scenes that Aria shot. Unfortunatelly I wasn't as enthusiastic about the shots that followed.

Chose Your Parntners Wisely

Our trip to Poland in December 1999 has produced mediocre results in terms of shots, some of which were out of focus or couldn't be used because of dirt on the lens! I also could not relate to the dialog. This horrible case of "third rate poetry", as my friend Maciek rightfully called it was put in the mouths of Ula and myself and shot at the location of the Auschwitz museum. Being long time writing partners Maciek and myself were tried our best to fix Aria's creation but the final result is still a dialog that does not go anywhere- either poetically or dramatically. Of all of the people present at the shooting only Aria claimed to be satisfied with the outcome. The rest of us could not understand and did could not believe what was happening. I was terribly embarrassed… and still am. I found myself in a very ambiguous position. Without any previous experience in film making, what right did I have for insisting on my own ideas?

On Collaboration

On the other hand I have been often collaborating with people who had less skill than I had, yet I still valued their opinions. Quite often people without much experience might do something extraordinary because of their enthusiasm for doing something that they haven't previously done. Keith Van Wetter has made a significant contribution to the film making process during the recent months. We don't argue much even though we work so much together on something that is not always relaxing (as -lets say-running into the cold ocean waters over and over again and if that wasn't enough, climbing a steep hill with lots of equipment on our shoulders, and when our shoes are wet and our toes are freezing and about to fall off).

Editing Complexities

At the beginning of 2000 the concept of the motion picture was still not fully explained to me. Finally, when I purchased the editing equipment, I was told to begin editing the footage we had so far, but there still was no plan. Fortunately by that time I had shot a lot of material during my visits to Poland. That itself was not enough, but in conjunction with the first scenes of the movie, it was a good start.

Meanwhile Aria seemed to be giving me more reasons to quit working with him. On a sunny morning in July of 2000 I took the equipment away from him and spent the remaining part of the summer editing. I would work many hours every day, except for one week, when I took a short vacation trip. Sometimes it was not easy to keep working.

I do not intend to project any false sense of confidence (I will leave that to the politicians!), but because of my efforts, I feel I have come a long way with the project since June when I was in Poland. Although I often wish that there were some plan or a script to fall back on, it's quite amazing what is happening in the process. On one level it is time to meditate on the nature of cinema (which sometimes leads to a revelation); on the other, the film took on a life of its own and we can only follow it, making sure that we don't miss a moment.

I am thankful that my most recent trip to Poland has produced some remarkable footage, in part because my very good long-time friend Karolina, who is a photographer as well as a lawyer, often assisted me when I was walking with the camera through our city, Wroclaw. She loves Wroclaw (no less than I do) and she is good observer.

Pictures of a City (my City)

One of my favorite sequences so far is comprised of the footage Karolina and I took together. I like this part because of how the content and the editing compliment each other. It starts off with a family dining outside a restaurant, chasing away a begging gypsy child -perhaps a Romanian immigrant: "The police should do something about these children." This shot is inter-cut with a sparrow eating breadcrumbs from Karolina's hand at that restaurant. The next shot shows a Gypsy mother sitting on the ground with a child and a generous elderly passerby giving her money. A tram can be heard in the background. The shot cuts to a shot of the inside of the tram. The bell rings and the door closes. As it reaches the point of closure the next shot takes us to the tram already in motion, passing by a rustic wall. In the next shot the tram is at a stop and the bell announces its take-off. As the tram begins to reach speed there is another cut and we are confronted with one of Wroclaw's inhabitants who is talking to us, laughing with us, making faces, performing, seemingly care free. He was the great actor; a kind that schools rarely produce; somebody after whom the real cinema should be. He spoke the truth of the place and the moment.

After he had left the tram I felt badly that I hadn't followed him and didn't get to know him better. That's where I hadn't done my best as a filmmaker. Perhaps I was too tired, or too embarrassed; that should not however be an excuse.

Apples

The issue of how much time one should devote to observe the world and how much of this time should be devoted to other people has indeed been a reoccurring question, not only throughout this paper, but also in my personal and artistic life. It can be debated on many levels, one of them being how this question relates to the films I admire and to my own work.

When I watch a good film, I most often don't look for the entertainment value. I don't look for suspense, unpredictability, or visual trickery. I hope to see an honest effort on the part of the director to help me look at my life differently. I want to understand. I don't want to be entertained or to be blown away by what the director can do. The problem with the majority of films, and almost all of the commercial ones, is that they are not realistic. The characters are larger than life, as if life in and of itself had nothing valuable to offer. Once again, this is not how I see the world.

When I was editing during the summer I reached a heightened sense of perception. In between the sessions I would step outside of the house to play Ping-Pong with my father or my cousin Andrzej, still thinking about the work ahead. The image of apples that were lying on the ground stuck in my mind. There I was playing Ping-Pong, thinking about politics and philosophies, and the apples were lying on the ground, not trying to make any statement, yet creating so much interest on my part. The apples are. The sky is. The sun is and-despite the differences between people-the people are as well.

Bartosz R. Milewski