In Search for a New Language

Rabbit à la Berlin (Królik po berlińsku) is the title of a Polish documentary that has been nominated for this year’s Oscar for the best short documentary.
The film was directed by Bartek Konopka, a graduate of courses held in the Andrzej Wajda School: a documentary course, during which he realized A Ballad on a Goat (Ballada o kozie), and the EKRAN course – a European program for film professionals, during which he worked on Height Anxiety (Lęk wysokości). Three for the Taking (Trójka do wzięcia), produced in the Andrzej Wajda School in 2006 and shot within the „30 minutes” program coordinated by the Polish Filmmakers Association (Stowarzyszenie Filmowców Polskich), won 12 prizes at various festivals, including Grand Prix and Best Actress (to Klaudia Barcik) at the European Short Films Festival Brest 2007 in France. Bartek Konopka, born in 1972, is also a graduate of film studies at the Jagiellonian University and of direction at the Radio and Television Department of the Silesian University.
Rabbit à la Berlin is a black and white, 51-minute long documentary presenting a metaphorical, touching and, simultaneously, very witty story about thousands of wild rabbits which for 28 years lived in the greenery between the two fences of the Berlin Wall. Konopka has a unique gift of telling his stories with irony, which is supported by his ability to perceive the reality from an unusual perspective, which he proved making the fiddly documentary A Ballad on a Goat.
When asked what made Rabbit à la Berlin such a success and why it won the hearts of the American Film Academy, Bartek Konopka answeres:
– It is difficult for me to assess my own film. I just can tell you the opinions that got to me after Rabbit… was presented at the Hamptons International Film Festival in the USA and the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Canada. The audience in these countries greeted the film with enthusiasm. The Americans even said that the story is told in an American manner. The audience appreciated the unusual idea and shooting of the document resembling a nature film. They also liked the accessible and witty way the complicated and tragic history of the Berlin Wall and division of Germany is told. I am really glad to hear such opinions. Let me stress that Rabbit… is a documentary edited in accordance with the rules of a feature film – it has its turning points and tension that involves the viewers. As the authors, we tried to present a few decades of the history within 51 minutes. And going back to the Hamptons International Film Festival – Rabbit… was granted the Conflict and Resolution Award and it was announced by actor Alec Baldwin. I would like to emphasize that many people collaborated in the production of Rabbit à la Berlin. Four of us were the hard core of the crew: Piotr Rosołowski – he did the filming and is coauthor of the screenplay, Anna Wydra – producer, Mateusz Romaszkan – editor and me – director and coauthor of the screenplay. We worked on this film together for four years. And I think that our „American dream” came true. We realized that it is possible to work on a film step by step, in an ordinary flat in a block, and then to make the world see the film and succeed. Rabbit à la Berlin was edited in the editor’s apartment in Warsaw. It is a kind of home-made product born out of the joint energy of a group of friends.
– The story about the rabbits in your film is in fact a story about people. Of a special type of people, let us add, „homo sovieticus” as you called them.
– We made rabbits our heroes as they are special animals. They live in groups; have their hierarchy, and their behaviors and correlations influence the lives of others. Rabbits are animals which can be easily manipulated, for which safety is the most important thing – more important than freedom – as well as their own territory and coexistence in a group. Showing wild rabbits which lived in between the two fences of the wall, we tried to tell a story about people closed between the walls, who are at first frightened by this kind of isolation, but later decide that „it is not that bad” and give up. They think: „We are not free, but we are really safe in here”. You can see similarities to people who for years lived in the communist system, which was oppressive and followed the carrot and stick approach. Rabbit à la Berlin is also a story about the mechanisms of propaganda and manipulation. Remember that we were inspired to make Rabbit… by my master, excellent documentary director Marcel Łoziński.”
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Bartek Konopka in his work follows the assumption: ‘On one hand, I am interested in searching for a new language, in a new idea, and on the other hand – in truth and something unexpected and spontaneous’. His films, which have received many awards, show that an original idea allows for making documentaries that combine an innovative technique, metaphoric message and narrative experiments