Movement in red

Project statement  

                      

The grass doesn’t want anything from me, it rises to its own purpose, 

and sweetly following the single holy dictum: 

to be itself, to let the sky be the sky, to let a young girl be a young girl freely – 

to let a middle-aged woman be, comfortably, a middle-aged woman.                                                                                                                                   Mary Oliver

A Movement in red series is inspired by my passion for 5 rhythms movement practice; it forms a part of a bigger entity called Movement Project.

In the presented series, in the course of one day, I and my friend – Ewelina, were exploring the possibilities of capturing movement, including shadows, shapes and colour, into the photographic frame.

My explorations in the 5 rhythms landscape I began over three years ago. At the time I was about completing an Introduction to Transpersonal Studies course. The course inspired me to dive into a field of the therapeutic bodywork and thereby to find a way to process my own creative blocks I was experiencing back then on a very frequent basis; I got to a point where I did not know any more how to approach my documentary practice. It was a quite difficult and uncomfortable place to be: a moment when I realised that my passion for documentary film needed to take on a different shape and I did not know at all how to deal with it.

Looking back at the first 5 rhythms dance classes I attended, it was not easy for me to find a connection to my body and to explore how I relate to it and to its particular parts. At the time “my head” was in charge, always ready to give solutions on how I “should” move my body. Over the time – despite of moments of resistance and frustration – I developed a strong sense of commitment to the practice.

This is how, gradually, I started to shift from a restricted and controlled movement to an exploration of my

 body and its movements.

 This is, too, how I found my way to speak through images again and thereby regained my - temporarily lost - documentary perception: I learnt to see my documentary practice in a broader context, that means - not restricted any more by my preconceptions about what kind of documentary filmmaker I “should” be or how my career as a documentary filmmaker “should” look like.

Instead, I started to look at my everyday in a more mindful way what, in turn, led me to the new documentary endeavours.

A Movement in red series is one of them.

In the picture: Ewelina Jendrzejczak