Columbus

Die Geschichte der Entdeckung und Kolonialisierung Amerikas durch Europa wird über biografische Fragmente von Christoph Columbus erzählt, der wahrscheinlich an einer bipolaren Störung litt. Gefilmt in der Nähe seines Wohnortes in Polen, erzählt Sasnal den narrativ stringenten Teil über Texttafeln. Sie unterbrechen einen Fluss von Bildern, die auf den ersten Blick keiner zusammenhängenden Handlung folgen: Ein halbwüchsiger Junge streift durch einen Park, futuristische Architektur, ein Plattenteller im Halbdunkel, gestapelte Bücher über Geschichte, Gesellschaft und Politik, schließlich ein älterer Mann und ein Kind bei der Gartenarbeit. Die Textstellen offenbaren in der Folge den symbolischen Gehalt der kurzen Sequenzen und binden so die postkoloniale Gegenwart an die historische Erzählung. (Claudia Slanar)

Wilhelm Sasnal expands on this very personalized reading of so consequential a historical figure to create a film that examines the colonizer’s state of mind and legacy in an oblique, home-movie style. (Phaidon)

Director's Biography

ANKA SASNAL, born in 1973 in Tarnów in Poland, studied Polish literature and gender studies. As a screenwriter, editor, and filmmaker, she lives in Kraków together with Wilhelm Sasnal, who was also born in Tarnów in 1972 and studied architecture and painting. WILHELM SASNAL attracted international attention as a visual artist with a series of solo and group exhibitions in renowned international galleries and art institutions with paintings, comic books, drawings, photographs, and videos. From the first joint film project onwards, significant characteristics of their artistic collaboration are already visible: the intensive focus on language, texts, and literary models, which they transform into an image language that suits them. An explicit political stance can be noted in their films – thematically Anka and Wilhelm Sasnal circle around the current state of Polish society, rising xenophobia, the relationship of Polish society to the Catholic church, and especially the recent Polish past during the Second World War. A dystopian worldview, although not so much a pessimistic one – as they say themselves – may certainly be attributed to their work, along with an undisguised interest in the “dark” side of human beings. Anka and Wilhelm Sasnal are no strangers to the festival audience in Linz, as they have already been represented in the festival program twice in the past. In 2012, they won the main prize with It Looks Pretty from a Distance, which premiered in Rotterdam, and then returned with Parasite in 2014.

// Films at CROSSING EUROPE Film Festival 2017

// Co-directed films: Słońce, to słońce mnie oślepiło (The Sun, the Sun Blinded Me, 2016), Huba (Parasite, 2014; CE’14), Aleksander (2013, doc), Z daleka widok jest piękny (It Looks Pretty from a Distance, 2011; CE’12), Świniopas (Swineherd, 2008)

// Films by Wilhelm Sasnal: Afternoon of a Faun (2015, short), Columbus (2014, short), Inhuman Hunger (2014, short), Kacper (2010, short), Europa (2007, short), Brazil (2005, short), Marfa (2005, short)