The Missing Heroine from 1975 comes back in art video serial:
MAJKA FROM THE MOVIE (Szaleństwo Majki Skowron / Madness of Majka Skowron, 1975), 2009, DVD
Found footage art video serial episodes by Zuzanna Janin:
The WAY, 2009, DVD, loop, 15’54’’
70’s, 2009, DVD, loop, 13’16’’
BEFORE or AFTER, 2009, DVD, loop, 13’16’’
HERE or THERE, 2009, DVD, loop, 22’53’’
FUN FUN FUN, 2009, DVD, loop, 30’38’
trailer by Tomasz Kozak
Skelter&Shelter, 2009, DVD, 18′12”
Episodes can be added each to other in different way so they will composed as a short experimental art video film.
70’s, 2009, DVD, loop, 13’16’’
episode from the video serial: MAJKA FROM THE MOVIE (Szaleństwo Majki Skowron / Madness of Majka Skowron, 1975), 2009, DVD
Short description (fragments)
Majka from the Movie is Poland’s first artistic video series, consisting (so far) of 6 short art videos, made by Zuzanna Janin (5 episodes) in collaboration with Tomasz Kozak (a trailer). The series uses the found footage technique, composing scenes from Polish TV serial for teenegers from 1970’s, entitled Szaleństwo Majki Skowron Madnesss of Majka Skowron), as well as from many American and European movies from the last 40 years. Some scenes were shot by the artist in our days, in various places, including Poland, England, US, Japan and elsewhere. The protagonist is a teenage girl travelling in both space and time, not only in historical and geographic plans but also in the sphere of culture.
During her journey Majka, a cult, rebel character who “escapes” from the frame of original serial and begins to wander across the area of culture, faces a lot of different situations, events, meeting people - real person as well as characters from movies - and finding herself within film scenes. She talks to prominent figures from the areas of science and philosophy (as Slavoj Žižek) or pop-culture (actors and singers, such as Iggy Pop or Tom Waits). Majka observes, listens, asks questions. Where did she come from and where is she bound? What is her journey’s end? It is not any specific place to reach. Instead, I suppose, Majka finds a true goal in searching for the very sense of existence in social and cultural context as she looks and finds or rather builds her own identity.
The way Zuzanna Janin approaches the problem seems very interesting, also because she made a young girl, Majka, who alongside, travels across culture the principal character (she called her “the missing heroine” in one interview). This is in opposition to tradition of European culture where the roles of those who seek their own identities and gradually find or discover them via a journey, either internal or real, were almost always played by men. Zuzanna Janin, speaking up for women’s experience, restores the right proportions.
“(…) She appears in places she neither has ever been nor she could even be before. For example, she couldn’t have met Colonel Kurtz / Marlon Brando in Vietnamese forests. Now she is there and witnesses his death. She was not on the desert in Zabriskie Point, where a girl – the film protagonist – wandered with her boyfriend and where she blew up a villa she regarded a symbol of capitalism and its values. Now Majka is that girl and it’s she who blows the house up. I shot a lot of additional footage, in which an actress’ daughter played. She acts Majka in the additional footage I needed, but Majka in fact wanders all over the world as I did the shooting it in Tokyo, in Miami, in London, anywhere. This gives me a dual character, Majka from 1975 / Majka from 2009 is the one heroine, at the same time meets various people, identifying herself with some of them – as she does with the girl in Zabriskie Point. Other times she remains indifferent, as when she falls asleep and misses all the final scenes of Uma Thurman fighting in Kill Bill. Then, on the contrary, in fragments of Rybczyński’s Tango she becomes one of the key figures. And she goes on again and meets Ripley from Alien. As they both watch what the science fiction culture created over time, Majka unexpectedly finds herself in Tarkowski’s Solaris. Later on she meets Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s feature film The Doors. All these adventures are divided into episodes, six of them so far. In one, entitled The Way she’s on the run all of the time: fleeing across Tokyo, forests, jungle, until she ends up at the Warsaw Central Station, meets Žižek and asks him who she should meet in her journey through the land of culture. “Look not for people” - he answers. “Instead, look for what they do. These are miracles”. Thanking him, she goes on. This is all very symbolic. “ (…)
Zofia Starikiewicz, Poznan 2009
Quotes from the catalogue interwiev by Kamila Wilebska with Zuzanna Janin, Warsaw 2009
