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Mesa film festival features Polish Catholic moviemaker
By Rebecca Bostic, The Catholic Sun
March 6, 2008
MESA — A good film makes viewers better human beings, said Polish Catholic filmmaker Krzysztof Zanussi, whose films were featured last month at the fifth annual Mesa Community College International Film Festival.
Zannusi, who was present at each of the five screenings Feb. 19-23 at Harkins Arizona Mills 24, is well known for his part in “The Cinema of Moral Anxiety,” a group of Polish filmmakers who take on weighty content.
“If you are degraded, even more confused and more stupid than when you entered that screening, then it means the film was bad, and sometimes even destructive if it leads you to desperation or you have the feeling that life has no sense,” Zanussi said. “Then you not only wasted your time, but you suffered some harm.”
The more than 1,000 viewers who attended the screening suffered little if any harm, according to Don Castro, director of the festival.
“The intelligence of Zanussi’s films and the depth of the characters” are thought provoking, Castro said. “As one audience member put it, after they ended, she just couldn’t stop thinking about the films.”
Wieslaw A. Ochocki agreed. Although he was born in Poland, Ochocki has lived in the United States for more than 20 years and has been a fan of Zanussi’s films for even longer.
“He is an angel himself. He sent a message to all people around the world,” Ochocki said of Zanussi. “We have to watch ourselves. It’s a message to each person — we have a mission and that’s a struggle.”
At the screening of “The Silent Touch,” Zanussi’s 1992 film, the filmmaker described the mission he believes all artists share — to use their talents for the betterment of the world.
“In old European languages there are words that are very appropriate to express this idea — as an artist you are only a tube, you’re a transmitter, not the source,” Zanussi said.
As far as holding himself to that selfless mindset, Zanussi admits it can be difficult.
“I try to remind myself of that against my ego and against my selfish, silly illusion that I am the center of the universe,” he said.
In his own films, it is important that his faith plays a role in interpreting the world, Zanussi said.
“It is in the center, it is not a habit, it is not a tradition, but it is something central for life,” he said. His faith helps him reflect on the “basic things in life that are linked to religion.”
In all his films the questions he asks of his characters are “asked by someone who has been exposed to the Gospel, who tries to understand and asks how it translates to my life and to modern time,” Zanussi said.
The sincerity of his faith, which comes through in the questions raised by his films, is obvious to Zanussi fans, and even to Pope John Paul II, who spent time with Zanussi throughout his life.
Although John Paul II influenced Zanussi most when he was a bishop, they met during his papacy.
“He wanted to see me many times because he wanted to listen to some of my stories — not my opinions — but just stories because he was living in suffering,” Zanussi said.
“He wanted to hear about real life. He often wanted to hear about the questions that people asked after the screenings,” Zanussi said of his fellow countryman. “He didn’t care about my answers, he wanted to know the questions.”
Zanussi hopes only that his films touched the hearts and minds of the audience that viewed them throughout the weeklong event.
“They met some characters that they didn’t know before and they maybe saw some stories that are showing out of people’s life,” he said. “Maybe through that they will find more sense in their own life.”
Helping others in their search for meaning is what Zanussi is after in his films.
“I would like them to remember their experience,” he said. “They may forget me, but what is important is that they know something I was trying to convey about a sense of life.”
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