Ewelina Rosinska

Ashes by Name is Man (Ewelina Rosińska, Germany / Poland)

This is a film that is attempting something rather new, and as a result it took me a couple of viewings to really understand Rosińska's overall approach. In its broadest sense, Ashes by Name is Man is an expansive formalist study of the place of the Catholic Church in Poland, how it impresses itself upon the landscape and embodies its precepts in architecture. But it is also an observational portrait of an elderly couple, seen at home, walking in the woods, and in the final shot, peeling an apple. One speaks of "going to church," but one doesn't always consider how the church comes to you, how a life of habitual faith can moot distinctions between culture and personality. In its firm handheld cinematography and regard for light, Rosińska's film shows the possible influences of Robert Beavers and Ute Aurand. But where Beavers typically restricts himself to a small number of elements and organizes them into a fugue, or Aurand composes even her longer works out of brief, complete ideas, Rosińska seems to apply Peleshian's "distance montage" concept, creating relationships that tug at our mind's ability to fully perceive them. One of the year's most challenging works, and indeed one of the best.

First Look is Museum of the Moving Image’s annual showcase for “adventurous new cinema.” The programs have historically shed light on some of the most exciting new voices in film, and this year proved the same with featuring works by folks who deserve to be heralded as major voices in the avant-garde and beyond. This year, the festival ran from March 15th to 19th, and films are also again throughout this weekend. Below, find reviews of 13 different films that screened at the 2023 edition of MoMI’s First Look.

Earth in the Mouth (2020) and Ashes by Name is Man (2023) are diary films which transcend the autobiographical nature of the form.

Ewelina Rosińska’s films, both receiving their North American premiere this month, are built from elements which individually have an intimate and observational character: the interactions of friends and family, church services, travel, a gravestone sharing the artist’s last name. But Rosińska arranges her material more in the manner of musical forms than of narrative, crafting rich but ambiguous layers of meaning from their harmonies and dissonances. She invites the audience to engage with that meaning actively and critically rather than to share in a lived history.

The films are musical in more than just the metaphorical sense. Sound is key to their confident rhythm and formal cohesion. A piece of audio will last through a number of cuts, tying a sequence together and shaping its inflection. In Earth in the Mouth, sound and image have a contrapuntal relationship which is largely syncopated but allows for added emphasis when they sync up. Frequent changes in the source and character of the sound create a soundscape on equal footing with the photography. Sometimes the music is diegetic, as when a choral piece begins and a few shots later the film cuts to the choir singing it, but other times the sound is independent from the images, or even sharply contrasts it, as when a synthy new-wave song plays while the camera shows an organist playing for a church service. In one stunning sequence, the film goes completely silent while a rock band is shown rehearsing.

If Earth in the Mouth is something like an intricate baroque suite, Ashes by Name is Man is closer to a mass: solemn and contemplative. Its rhythms are much slower, its editing less circumspect, and while it employs several pieces of sacred music, its sound relies more on natural soundscapes than on a score. Despite these differences, the two films are of a piece in their search for the symbolic threads connecting spiritual life, personal relationships, politics, and the land. Ashes connects Catholic iconography with the Polish landscape, the artist’s grandparents with the ceremonies and architecture of the church; Earth contains multiple sequences that cut between the root systems of trees or collections of seashells and the singing of church choirs or the raising of a flag, and switches deftly between these sequences and scenes of friends and family enjoying casual moments at home or on the lakefront. Both films use visual motifs of fruit, birds, books, and cemeteries to represent cycles of life and culture as connected to the land.

Rosińska’s films eschew clarity of detail in favor of more universal ideas, but in a certain way it feels as though we get to know the artist better for it. We don’t learn about the facts of her life and relationships in the way we would in a Jonas Mekas-style diary film, but instead see the aesthetic and intellectual concerns that preoccupy her mind and structure her practice. Toward the end of Earth in the Mouth, we’re shown a page of a critical theory book with an underlined passage that reads, “Autonomy is an ideal which capitalist society itself brings forth but which cannot be realized under it. The autonomy of the individual is a necessary illusion of the capitalist mode of production…” This passage resonates with Rosińska’s approach in these films: to understand other people, we must understand the physical and social landscape which produced them and continues to reproduce them.

Mauro Lukasievicz: Allowing a dialogue between nature and urbanity by mixing all the mysticism and religion it can contain is not an easy task. How did the idea for Ashes By Name Is Man come about?

Ewelina Rosinska: My general practice is to collect images without a specific film project in mind, but there are still certain motives that are the driving force behind my work. So what you see in the film was shot in a state that involves the very contradictory attitudes of controlling and not controlling the process of making the images.

The footage for 'Ashes by name is man' was collected between 2017 and 2021 and revolves around a theme that has been very important to me for many years, which is the feeling of growing up in Poland, where the process of forming a national identity has never lost its importance, and where war (mainly the Second World War) and post-war history are constantly present. When thinking about national identity in this place, the institution of the state and the Catholic Church have been inextricably linked for centuries. The extreme national Catholic narrative, characterized by the victim myth and national pride in the country between Eastern and Western Europe, continues to influence generations in Poland, leaving people in a state of inner confusion. Various strategies for deconstructing this feeling have been very helpful in overcoming this inner conflict, up to the point of immersing myself in stereotypical images of the state and religion, familiar rituals or emblems that project historical or spiritual greatness. After their previous rejection, I wanted to reclaim all these elements and highlight my personal relationship with them. Within this approach, I decided to play with my affinity for nostalgia, spiritualism, drama or pathos.

During my visits to historically charged places, animals began to appear in front of my camera. Intuitively, I began to film them, seeing them as a kind of protagonist of temporality, highlighting the existence of the environment and sometimes feeling like a messenger between the infinite and the present. Just like the two old characters who are my links with the history of the last century.

ML: Between the mixture of the ancestral and the current, there is a certain tension at all times, between the urban invading nature or nature invading the urban. How did you decide what material to use and what was the final editing process like?

ER: Since I don't work with a script, the film only emerged during the editing process. At the beginning of this process, I decided to use four main categories to guide me through the collected material: State Power, Religion, City, and Nature. I would call this a vertical orientation, referring more to meanings, symbols, or metaphors. As a horizontal line, I decided to follow the chronology of the four seasons, starting with spring. With these two patterns in mind, the editing of images and sound is largely based on my intuition, sense of rhythm and a certain flow. There is also a strong level of personal history, you can see my grandparents in the film. This level relates to their experiences, their state of mind, and their memories. If one knew their history, one would recognize certain elements of their lives.

ML: Why did you decide to film in 16mm?

ER: Since 2016 I've been shooting mainly with 16mm and I always find the colors that come out and the ability of the material to transmit a certain light very impressive. I think this beauty, the magic of the sun, and chemistry are the main reasons for my choice of this medium.

“Las cenizas de un ritual”

En muchos aspectos, la convivencia entre urbanidad y naturaleza permite el diálogo de imágenes que suscitan una relación, en el sentido de un montaje armónico que establece analogías y diferencias, pero también una distancia de cómo esas planos pueden generar una ruptura con sensaciones propias de un modernidad que tiene la posibilidad de registrar aquel mismo diálogo establecido y ahí definir una narración, un contraste. De este modo, un síntesis mística y religiosa se interpone para tratar de homologar ambas.

Es el caso del cortometraje Ashes by name is man de Ewelina Rosinska, donde la convivencia entre ruralidad y sus entornos suscita una interrelación y una convivencia donde el ser humano se encuentra dentro. Entonces, se establece una serie de imágenes con cierta reminiscencia melancólica circunscritas a un microcosmos que bien podría simbolizar la comunicación entre una especie y su contexto en términos místicos.

El inicio muestra alguien tocando el piano en un claroscuro pictórico como advirtiendo el tono nostálgico que recorrerá el corto. De ahí en más, la campiña se establece como el punto de partida y de referencia para una sucesión de cuadros que evidencia una armonía entre naturaleza y pueblo, entre lo salvaje y lo urbano. Sin embargo, esta relación también se erige sobre un carácter ritual y espiritual. De esta manera, las escenas que se vinculan con el pueblo son de orden religioso, ya sea rezando en una iglesia o una procesión. Si la naturaleza es y supo ser elemento mítico y religioso, de adoración y de devoción, también se nos muestra esa conversión hacia lo que efectivamente terminó imponiéndose en la cultura occidental. Por ende, imágenes de cristo, de gente arrodillada con las palmas en el gesto de rezo, de cruces, de sacerdotes, se interponen con las del sol, la luna, el bosque y el mar.

La iglesia y el afuera se fundan en esa sinfonía de planos que atraviesa no solo la relación simbiótica sino también tensionada y apesadumbrada. Al calor de un sol de verano o la frescura de la luna, también puede haber desolación y soledad. Así, lo humano se cola en lo natural para habitarlo en términos de espacio y de escena, en una convivencia para consigo mismo y para con su entorno silvestre. Es en estos rituales que se arraiga la pertenencia tanto a un plano terrenal como celestial. Las cenizas y el cementerio entonces encarnan esa conexión astral y ancestral donde la tierra recibe esos cuerpos para luego alimentar las raíces mismas de una civilización.

La cámara, con sus movimientos y sus planos fijos, registra pretendiendo dilucidar una aparente comunión con aquello que filma y observa, desde posiciones variadas siguiendo un ritmo in crescendo que está al orden de un montaje rítmico que sabe cuando tensarse y aflojarse.

Las texturas y los paisajes sugieren contrastes y paralelismos donde lo católico y lo natural se funden en un postura barroca que culmina con el corte de un cuchillo que más que pelar una manzana, está preparando el fruto de su propia cosecha.

Ópera prima

Quisiera señalar la importancia de un cortometraje

Ashes by Name is Man (Ewelina Rosinska).

Ya se proyectó en Alemania, pero tendrá su estreno internacional en la próxima edición de Rotterdam. Se trata de una impresionante película experimental en 16 mm, en la tradición de Jonas Mekas o Ute Aurand, pero que ha encontrado su propio lenguaje. Impresionista, con un sorprendente sentido del montaje y del movimiento de cámaraque puede apreciarse en sunivel rítmico, es un retrato muy subjetivo de una región del sudeste de Polonia y de las personas, plantas y animales que la habitan.Película erigida en «destellos de belleza» que hipnotizan; me conmovió mucho.

Erde im Mund begins with the comforting clanking of hooves. Not only has our image moved into the higher fidelity of 16mm, we are now basking in sound—until a scene of a filmed band practice is brilliantly rendered in silence (and black and white, which weaves throughout the mostly-color film seamlessly). Rosińska’s camera captures her travels in a diaristic mode, yet in place of a Mekasian frenzy we are treated to a more deliberate approach to movement, careful to present photographed reality wherein the montage produces new associations alongside movements of a higher velocity which only smear the image on occasion. The soundtrack moves in and out of complementary resonance, never working against the image but never perfectly synchronous either; a shot of fabrics is set to the sound of their previously being torn, a shot of an iron to the sound of its potential for steam emission, the pouring of champagne set to the sound of its bottle being opened. It’s a subtle play with temporality, and one which is carefully nested into a film about the endless playful possibilities of life.