With In The Name Of and now Floating Skyscrapers it’s been a good year for gay-themed films from Poland – especially as these are some of the first ever made. That said, it’s perhaps surprising the films have arrived at the same time as life if becoming more difficult for LGBT people in Eastern Europs.
With Floating Skyscrapers hitting UK cinemas on Friday December 6th, we caught up with the movie’s director, Tomasz Wasilewski. The film is about a young man in a relationship with a woman, who has to deal with falling for man, but as Wasilewski tells us, it didn’t initially have any gay themes at all.
Where did the inspiration for Floating Skyscrapers come from?
The first stimulus to write the story was a bus station in Warsaw. This place interested me and inspired greatly as a filmmaker, and this is why most of the story took place there. Initially, it was a story about a fifty-year-old woman who worked at the station. The plot focused on her relationship with her daughter and the relationship between the daughter and another girl. I worked on the script for a long time and so it changed a lot. Each new version brought new characters and new solutions and finally, Floating Skyscrapers became a film about a guy, a swimmer who falls in love with another man.
Some people have suggested there’s a new wave of films about LGBT subjects coming from Eastern Europe. Do you feel Floating Skyscrapers is part of that, or at the moment is it more a film in isolation from a larger movement?
I really have no idea. For me, Floating Skyscrapers is most of all a psychological drama. I’ve noticed that journalists and public opinion like to classify my film as a gay/LGBT film. For me, it’s a portrait of people; I focus on their emotions, problems and love. Of course, homoerotic love is very important in the film, but I didn’t make the movie to change anything. I wanted to show this type of love because it’s omitted in the cinema of Central and Eastern Europe; but which director wouldn’t like to be among the first ones to raise a subject?
The situation for gay people seems to have deteriorated in Russia. Is it getting worse for LGBT people in Poland too?
You’d have to ask sociologists. Poland is certainly not as tolerant as it should be, like England or the USA, and this doesn’t apply just to sexual minorities but to all of them. It’s a pity, it should be more tolerant.
Do you feel that as homosexuality has become more visible in Eastern Europe, including with films like Floating Skyscrapers, this has led to a backlash from those supporting ‘traditional’ values?
I look for universal values in the cinema, regardless of whether the characters are hetero- or homosexual. Representatives of both can be either good or evil. I don’t think heterosexual people to have other values to those who are homosexual.
Do you think it’s strange there’s still so much difficulty for LGBT people in Poland, considering being gay has never been illegal in the country?
I think each citizen should have equal rights.
How did you find the main actors for Floating Skyscrapers?
I found Mateusz Banasiuk (Kuba) and Bartek Gelner thanks to auditions. Everyone else I cast straight away. I knew most of them and some are my good friends. I only didn’t know the guys.
There were actors whom I offered the roles and who rejected them. There were some who decided not to come to their audition or cancelled it at the very last moment. They never said they did it because of the subject. I never heard anything like this, but when I suggested another time or date I heard all sorts of excuses. I’m of an opinion that you have to feel the role you take on. You can’t force yourself just because you want to be in a movie. This just wouldn’t work.
Was there any resistance from any actors about the movie’s gay themes?
No.
A lot of the film relies on the actors showing their feelings and telling the story without dialogue. Is that difficult to achieve? How did you work with the actors to make that happen?
For me it’s not difficult. This is the sort of cinema I make. It was similar (with even fewer dialogues than in Floating Skyscrapers) in my debut, In a Bedroom. I prefer it when the protagonist experiences his emotions within himself rather than talks about them. This way there’s more truth in the film. I don’t like movies in which you learn everything from the dialogues. In my cinema, the viewers don’t learn everything. I prefer them to guess what they’re not told explicitly.
How difficult was it to get funding for the film?
It was very difficult to finance the film. We started shooting with only a third of the budget. I owe a lot to my producers from Alter Ego Pictures. They took on a great responsibility, because the film wasn’t financially secure. There aren’t many producers like Roman Jarosz and Iza Igel, who are very bold and devoted to the cinema. It became slightly easier and we found some additional funding when Floating Skyscrapers became successful abroad.
The film seems interested in human interaction and different forms of love – such as between family members and between lovers – and how this affects us. Was that very deliberate?
I wanted to show various shades of relationships between people. We live in various social groups. People have male and female partners, brothers, sisters, parents. Something connects us to these people with stronger or weaker bonds. This is how the human world is constructed. It was obvious for me that I wanted to depict all these relationships. Especially that I tell a story about people who are very young. About people who are not yet independent.
I was also interested in how the relationships in Floating Skyscrapers seem to be about negotiating personal needs with the needs of others – such as Kuba deciding whether his love for Michał is more important than the status quo of his relationship with his wife and his girlfriend. Do you think relationships are almost a battle between personal needs and the needs of the other person? Can there ever be real balance?
Of course, such balance is possible. Living with another human being is very easy and very difficult at the same time. Initially, there’s chemistry and a great sexual desire, but these disappear with time and the relationship starts changing completely. There are different values involved. Whilst rehearsing with the actors for Floating Skyscrapers, we were reflecting on what it means to love one person and fall in love with someone else. Is it possible at all to love two people simultaneously? What are the feelings of the person who is dumped and who still loves so much that the pain is nearly physical? And finally, what are the feelings of the person who falls in love with someone who loves someone else? In the film I’m not stating which of these loves is more important. There isn’t a more or less important love. Love is love. Everyone who loses love suffers, regardless of their age, sex, the colour of their skin or their sexual orientation. The ideal state is the state of balance in life, balance in love, but is it so easy to achieve? I don’t know. But it’s the moments of the lack of balance that are of interest to me as a filmmaker. In such situations people are internally broken and hurt, which makes them so romantic and appealing.
What do you hope people get from seeing the film?
Real emotions. Human truth. I hope that whilst watching the film, they will feel the same emotions as those experienced by the characters in it. Because everyone has been hurt in life. Everyone’s been kicked in the arse by love. These things are universal and this is why there’s a chance that the viewers will feel empathy for the characters in Floating Skyscrapers. And if they do, I’ll consider it my success as a filmmaker.
Which movies were you inspired by in the making of Floating Skyscrapers?
I wasn’t inspired by any particular movies. I love the films of Urlich Seidl, Michael Haneke, Darren Aronofsky and Steve McQueen. There are many directors whose work I respect. I watch a lot of movies and often go to the theatre, but I can’t determine how much the works of others influence my own works. I think there aren’t any direct inspirations. I make films my own way, intuitively.
Are you working on any new films?
I’m slowly beginning to work on my third film, United States of Love. It’s going to be a portrait of five women just after the fall of communism in Poland. I’m very excited about it.
Thank you, Tomasz.
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