Invisible

The Polish filmmaker Zofia Pregowska wanted to make her graduation film using the
fly-on-the-walltechnique, with the camera unobtrusively present and the filmmaker pretending to be absent. She took her camera to the tiny apartment that is home to 90-year-old Krystyna, who lives surrounded by books and writing pads. That’s remarkable in itself since Krystyna is almost blind, but that doesn’t stop this still vital woman from writing passionate and eloquent poetry that celebrates life. She scrawls her poems herself, but this turns out to be an unreliable method because one of her pens doesn’t work, meaning a recent poem is almost illegible. “My poems are vanishing into the void!” she cries out, writing yet another beautiful poem on this very subject. In the period of time that Pregowska’s camera is present, Krystyna is preparing for a performance. As well as providing a storyline, it shows how this optimistic woman keeps a life of reliance at bay. She may not be able to see, but she misses nothing. So there’s no chance of the camera being invisibly present in this tiny dwelling. The fly on the wall couldn’t have been made visible in a more beautiful way.