Filmoteka Muzeum

Weavers is based on the 1892 play, of the same name, by the German novelist Gerhart Hauptmann. The play describes the 1844 Silesian weavers uprising, an event that took place in the Owl Mountains. In Molska’s film the artist transposes the story of the proletarian uprising to a contemporary setting, retaining aspects of the original source’s dialogue, chorus and extensive stage directions. Unemployed miners sit with  a Silesian mine in the background. Reciting the words of Hauptmann’s play, they complain about the exploitation they witness at the mine. Recordings featuring the everyday sound of work in the coalmine and the sound of the weavers’ rousing song accompany the scene. The song, however, loses its revolutionary overtone when sung in this new setting. Arranged thus, Molska questions the validity of left-wing rhetoric: that from the nineteenth century, as well as the rhetoric of the Solidarity movement of the 1980s.

Weavers was produced by The Foksal Gallery Foundation in cooperation with the Kronika Gallery in Bytom.
 

Year: 2009
Duration: 12'04
Language: Polish
Source:

© Anna Molska, courtesy Foksal Gallery Foundation

Acquisition date: Jun 5, 2012
Acquisition: deposit
Ownership form: deposit