The presence of director Kasia Rosłaniec at Cinema Jove is recurring. In 2010 she received the Luna de València Award for her debut film Galerianki (Mall Girls), a huge box office success in her country. Her return to Cinema Jove illustrates the fidelity the festival has shown previously with other directors that it highlighted and discovered in the past, as is the case of Ruben Östlund, awarded the Golden Palm in the last Cannes Festival who was recognized with the Luna de Valencia Award in 2015 and who became known in Cinema Jove with Involuntary in 2009.
Roslaniec’s second film, Baby Blues, was also a success in Poland, and received the Best Film of the Generation Section of Berlinale 2013. Her third title focuses once again on the girls of today, whose reality revolves around shopping, risky sex, alcohol, drugs and the creation of a self-image. Satan Said Dance is a kaleidoscopic proposal, built through Instagram, whose main character, a young recognized 20-year-old writer, displays her turbulent life in 54 two-minute long pieces through this social media platform. Parties, substance abuse and complicated personal relationships are the stones that pave her path to destruction. It is a drama in the times of the selfie, that speaks about society’s solitude and selfishness. The film was part of the Global Section of the Austin SXSW Festival.
This is the second time you participate in CinemaJove. In 2010, you won the award with your debut film Galerianki (Mall Girls). What do you remember of those days?
Great guys, the jury. I didn’t have a chance to talk to them, I guess because I am too shy, but I observed them drinking coffee. I imagined they were nice and had good taste, since they liked my film (laughs). I remember spending my time speaking to very fantastic and fun people, and directors from other countries. We also watched each other’s’ films.
How important are awards for your career?
Awards are important for everybody, for the children in kindergarten and the dog owners in dog competitions. They motivate us. When you have one, you want to have two. So you have to get better and better. It’s tough work.
Your debut film, Galerianki, portrayed the consumerist adolescence of Poland. In you last film, your characters are around 30. What is the relation between the characters of both films?
The easy answer would be that there is no relation. Karolina is a young privileged high class girl. She has a big family and is successful. In contrast, the girls in Galerianki came from broken homes and were much younger. The points of view are absolutely different. However, both Karolina as well as the girls in the mall are a product of the 21st century, where solitude is filled with narcissism.
Satan Said Dance has been summarized as an Instagram film in the times of the selfie. How did you come up with this idea?
From Instagram. And from the Polaroid pictures of Dash Snow. When I see and I have seen Instagram profiles, I can see their lives, their special moments, learn about places and people. I can create the story of somebody with no time link. That “no time” was the starting point. I realized that, by living moments like the ones in the Instagram images, we don’t stop to think about the consequences of what we are doing. All of our concentration is on that moment, not in what happened before or what is going to happen after. There is not life plan. We can do everything; we can know and love everyone. But in the end, we are very alone in this massive amount of places that we visit and people that we know.
Generation after generation the shapes change but the problems seem to be the same. Karolina is famous as a writer, but it doesn’t seem to fill the emptiness she feels, is this true?
Writing is the most solitary occupation in the world.
One of the most interesting achievements of the film is its structure. Satan Said Dance is built like a puzzle, there is no conventional plot, just a series of moments connected through Karolina. Why did you choose this structure?
I am never able to answer the questions why. I only do things the way I feel them. The film is a mosaic of moments in the life of Karolina. The biggest conflict she has is with herself. That is why she is always reprimanding herself. She is sick, and if she doesn’t change her lifestyle, she will die. But she doesn’t want to live a peaceful life. She’s greedy. I took an Amy Winehouse biography as an example. I didn’t want to make a conventional biographical story because it is not surprising. Everybody is born and dies. What I’m interested in is the puzzle of our lives.
The sequences change color depending on the relation of Karolina with the context, the characters and the audience. What inspired you?
The Rubik cube colors. I imagined Satan Said Dance as a 54 piece Rubik cube. Each one of them is a scene. All the scenes can be reproduced simultaneously, and they all last 2 minutes, you can watch them in whatever order you want. Whichever you want. As everybody knows, Rubik’s cube has six colors. And the meaning of the colors is the same in almost all cultures. Red is connected to blood; white, to death… But what is most interesting is that the colors of the cube are the colors of the chakras, the points of energy of our body. The first chakra is red and is connected to how we relate to our body. The problems with acceptance of our body, with food… Orange speaks about sexuality. Yellow relates to ego. Green relates to love, to the relation to family and people that are close to you. Blue is related to communication and creativity. In the film, these scenes display the life of the main character, her work as a writer. The communication she creates with the world through her work. The last, the white chakra opposes the first one. While red is related to the body, white is about being outside of your body. Spiritual life. And death.
