Filmoteka Muzeum

Film characterised by the rhythm of a mystical ritual of counting subsequent lives that have passed away. The artist draws a continuous line that keeps falling down endlessly, moving with his camera through the symbols on the gravestones. He begins with the star, the symbol of birth, and ends with the cross, which stands here for death. The artist intended the film to be an account of the experience of death, the experience of “total reification”.

The work, which constitutes an attempt at merging the most basic existential content with the formal and structural experiments of the Workshop of Film Form (whose impact on his early works Libera frequently addresses), “works through” a range of threads related to the artist’s period of imprisonment and his experience of the first years of martial law.

Quoted from: Ł. Ronduda, Zbigniew Libera’s Life and Work 1982-2008, [in:] Zbigniew Libera. Works from 1982-2008, D. Monkiewicz {ed.), exhibition catalogue, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw 2009.