Marta Pajek. Impossible Figures

Wanting to interpret a film sometimes prevents us from enjoying it, from understanding it in its pure sensitive and abstract power. Logic and reason can be an obstacle to enjoy Marta Pajek's work, which operates in the most atavistic part of our perception. Her films, beautifully drawn with clear line drawings, are far from linear narrative and defy conventional cinematic paths. His student short After Apples (2004) already anticipated themes of surrealism and metaphysics. Her trilogy Impossible Figures, with disturbing transformation scenes, also rejects the nature-reason dualism, criticizing Enlightenment ideals. Inspired by impossible figures such as Penrose's triangle, the trilogy destabilizes the instinct to interpret logically. Pajek thus pushes for a phenomenological and emotional response, disrupting the comfort zones of cinema.

> With the author's presence.

Program:

PO JABŁKACH (AFTER APPLES, Marta Pajek, 2004, 6')
.An animated parable filled with oneiric poetry and surreal humour. Somewhere, God knows where, all the apples have already fallen and everything is submerged in dreams. In a small town, too, a mother is sleeping with her child. And when reason sleeps... A film made under the artistic supervision of Prof. Jerzy Kucia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow.

SNĘPOWINA (SLEEPINCORD, Marta Pajek, 2011, 13')
.An ambiguous story, which should be watched more than once, where the protagonist is a dream. Marta Pajek’s film, drawn with a characteristic line and going on in three types of space: abstract, dreamlike and realistic, beguiles and continually spurs the viewer to look for answers to the questions about mutual relations between the worlds presented. The allusion to the umbilical cord in the title suggests that the dream is the only way to connect us with the reality inaccessible to our eyes.

FIGURY NIEMOŻLIWE I INNE HISTORIE II (IMPOSSIBLE FIGURES AND OTHER STORIES II, Marta Pajek, 2016, 15')
The film portrays a story of a woman, who keeps on stumbling and falling in her daily rush. When she gets up, she discovers her house has quite unexpected attributes – it’s built from paradoxes and filled with illusions. The film is the second in a triptych inspired by the concept of impossible figures. Each of the parts tells a story of aiming for perfection and trying to fulfil yourself in a reality full of traps.

FIGURY NIEMOŻLIWE I INNE HISTORIE III (IMPOSSIBLE FIGURES AND OTHER STORIES III, Marta Pajek, 2018, 12')
.A Man and a Woman meet in a waiting room and immediately get closer to each other. They commence a game that gradually gets more and more ferocious.Their faces resemble masks while shapes slowly lose their integrity. Bodies are formed like clay, embracing each other until the limits of impossibility. III is a portrait of a woman in an exhausting relationship with a man, which allures and repulses at the same time. 

FIGURY NIEMOŻLIWE I INNE HISTORIE I (IMPOSSIBLE FIGURES AND OTHER STORIES I, Marta Pajek, 2021, 12')
After a huge explosion, only an old couple remains in an abandoned city. An old woman wanders tediously through empty streets. She passes by the statues of some now completely irrelevant and long-forgotten victories. In the shop windows, she sees some abandoned and dead mannequins. In short flashback, we get to see those, who will never return to the city. Marta Pajek’s film is a post-apocalyptic portrait of the world where the human being and its existence means no more than a split second. The film is the missing part of the trilogy Impossible Figures and other stories.

> Not recommended under 16 years old.