dream team

Art collaboration | Poetry film

“Dream team” is a rare kind of collaboration that happens between people who trust each other’s instincts and take care of their parts in communication, but without limiting each other. It happened among five artists: a poet, a director, a performer, a musician, and a writer/illustrator. The idea was to let the poem gain additional dimensions of sound, movement, and picture — in one work — and see what it would yield in effect. Click play for the result.

The Poetry

Szymon Domański is one of the more interesting voices in contemporary Polish poetry — precise, unsentimental, published by Wydawnictwo j and featured at the Miłosz Festival.

The Motion

Agata Majcherowicz is a director and screenwriter whose documentary shorts have twice been selected for the Młodzi i Film festival. Jakub Jurand Bieszczad performed on screen.

The Music

Wojtek Makowski is a Warsaw-based composer, producer and guitarist who has scored for film and performed at festivals across Poland. Jan Jakub Zieliński wrote the musical theme.

The Voice

Is mine; the voice of a writer with selective mutism — a bold choice. And a very interesting experiment with words. From uncoding the poem to coding it back into speech is a long run.

Szymon Domański

dream team

staliśmy tam pod groźbą spalenia
sadziliśmy pety
rozbijaliśmy barki
nie mieliśmy wpływu i
byliśmy gotowi stać do końca

ale któryś z nas rozmienił
obietnice jak tanie kapsle
węgiel mi świadkiem, że
stalibyśmy tam do końca
gdybyśmy tylko nie upadali
jeden za drugim

wokół skrzypią drzwi, my
chodzimy catwalkiem po magazynach.
kleimy potłuczoną porcelanę
a pomarszczone dłonie wiedzą
że fraza musi być rwana jak życia

wszystkie niedogaszone pety wyznaczają mi pokutę
wszystkie niedogaszone pety wyznaczają mi pokutę
wszystkie niedopałki znajdą swe odbicie w śniegu

Translation: Mira Maria Belniak

dream team 

we stood there under threat of burning
we planted cigarette butts
we smashed shoulders
we had no influence and
we were ready to stand till the end

but one of us changed
promises like cheap bottle caps
coal be my witness that
we would have stood there till the end
if only we hadn’t fallen
one after another

doors creak around us, we
walk the catwalk through warehouses.
we glue broken porcelain
and wrinkled hands know
that the phrase must be torn like lives

all the unextinguished butts assign me penance
all the unextinguished butts assign me penance
all the cigarette ends will find their reflection in the snow