Trains by Maciej J. Drygas
“I have been working with archival materials for many years. I have spent hundreds of hours in the archives, looking through thousands of metres of film tape. I have always been fascinated by the activity of taking original materials and giving them a whole new meaning. How to use the huge possibilities of the language of film to build an emotional relationship between the viewer and the archived reality?” Maciej J. Drygas
Composed entirely of archival footage, Maciej J. Drygas’ Trains is a collective portrait of people in 20th century Europe, capturing their hopes, desires, dramas, and tragedies. In this wordless film, full of beauty and bitterness, the excitement of adventure becomes a curse, and tears of joy mingle with the pain of despair.
Times change, the pattern repeats. The archival material in this wordless film evokes an inevitable cycle of delight and destruction, beauty and bitterness. The image of a tangle of railroad tracks and switches raises the inevitable question: Which route will humanity choose?
Co-presented by Grand Illusion Cinema and Mount Analogue Art + Cinema.