A Walk in Bieszczady

Poland1958documentary6'Pokaz specjalny (2018)

This short quaint film, which captures the natural beauty of the Bieszczady mountains, contains elements that recur in Slesicki’s later films – his enchantment with the mountains landscape, passion for filming minute details on meadows, fields, paths and trials; but above all else, his sensitivity to the ethereal beauty of matter. Slesicki was able to discern the exceptional in the ordinary – see of horses wading in a river, a cart crossing a ford, a peasant thatched hut with whitewashed walls and a flock of turkeys in the yard, the sound of a bell coming from a small wooden church or a Jesus by the roadside. The melancholic note which permeates the film is later discernable in Slesicki’s other films. There is a symbolic scene where a roller events the crushed stone for a road to be built. This visual sign of change in the highland landscape, which will alter the lives of its inhabitants, can also be found in his first independently made “Tales of the Road” and his final documentary, “Sloping Fields”. Having watched the film, which was originally entitled “Bieszczady”, I recalled Slesicki’s words uttered years later. In his films “he tended to search for new ways of looking at well –known things, and try to inspire reflection upon some broad dilemmas of human existence. If I hoped for a type of audience it would have been one sensitive to that kind of message. I find proof of such human sensitivity until this day.”