Staron’s on Brothers

Wojciech and Malgorzata Staron were in the vip room yesterday after the screening of their masterpiece ”Brothers” that was shown in the big hall of the Sava Center in Belgrade at the Magnificent7 festival. Almost 1000 viewers attended and I can not recall such a almost sacred silence of total attention in many of the sequences. To mention one: the older brother is putting on a sock with the help of pliers. The focus is on the foot and the action, the director/cameraman dares to let the camera watch – not a sound is heard in the cinema hall. Noone is checking emails, noone is chatting with the neighbour, it’s magic, because the film is magic! Because every image is composed beauty.

We were all the time during he years trying to find a balance, not to give a lot of information, we were searching for a language. We wanted to make a film in the present, not about the past.

Especially the older brother, the one who had done filming himself, was interested in our filming, also because we used several different digital cameras during the years we were filming.

The problem was that many times they were more interested in talking to us than to each other, when we came. So we were waiting for situations to come up.

Alfons, the painter, thought that the film would be about him as an artist!

One is an Artist of Life, he worked as a cartographer, the other is a dreamer. We met them in 1994, we were 20, they were 70, we became friends and kind of part of their family in Poland. They had to re-learn Polish, when they came home – and Russian when they wanted to speak about something that we should not hear!

A love story, one in the audience asked the couple. Yes, I was searching for the love between them, Wojciech Staron said. I think I found it… Oh, yes, you did indeed!

Photo: the Staron’s behind the brothers.