Media

• Mieczyslaw Janik
• Janusz Hajdun
• Zygmunt Nowak
• Wieslaw Nowak

Zbigniew Rybczyński, who is one of Poland’s best-known filmmakers, does not merely seek to depict reality with the camera. His work to expand cinematic narration with new formal and technical possibilities has been ongoing since the 1980s, by engaging intensely both with video technology and with computer software.

In his short film »Media«, he combines different image spaces with which he playfully reflects on the relationship between what is shown on the TV and what is perceived by the viewer. The setting is a film studio. Beside film reels and various utensils, two TV sets are placed on a table. The one at the back shows a color shot of a man, perhaps the artist, sitting in another room holding a film clapperboard in his hands. The TV at the front shows the extension of the space depicted on the screen of the TV at the back, but in black and white. There is a balloon sitting on a table. As soon as the clapperboard sticks are closed with a snap, the man starts throwing the balloon around. Not only the balloon moves, but also the TV set on which it is displayed. Depending on their position, the scenes on the TV sets merge with each other. The boundaries of the different image levels become blurred. Rybczyński allows the filmic content presented to enter the space in front of the television — the space of reception. In the end, the balloon bursts, the TV falls back onto the table, and the actor leaves the scene.