Replika Repliki (Replica of a replica)

In my research into Polish animation, I discovered a film made in my neighborhood (Rakowiec, Ohota, Warsaw) in 1975 which showed a single day in the yard of communist block. The yard was full of life, full of children playing from day to night. This was not the Rakowiec I knew. Now, the yards were silent and empty.

I thought it would be interesting to find the yard and re-create the film as a way to show how differently the common space was used, nearly 35 years later. With the help of my husband and other friends who grew up in the neighborhood and Marlena Happach, a prominent architect, I was able to locate and then gain access to the roof of the building where the original film was shot. I sat up there from morning to night, filming the lack of activity. It was a lonely day full of long shadows and meditations. Indeed the film shows how use of common has changed, how play has changed, and how the neighborhood, once full of children is now full of old people and old trees. Still the traces of the past remain — a deformity in the asphalt where rain still collects, holes which one anchored playground equipment now plugged with cement, and the never-changing slant of the sun…

I edited the film in sync with the original, and projected the old film and the new one side by side. The film was screened in a public park not far from the yard in question.