K15 / 2012

Full HD video / 4ʼ22″/ sound / color

 

K15, is a re-enactment of Willy Brandt’s historic kneeling in Warsaw. Reaching for documentary material, i.e. footage, Kopljar reconstructed all known elements of Brandt’s 1970 commemoration of the Nazis’ victims in the Warsaw ghetto. With the mise en scène transferred to the night ambience of modern-day Warsaw, we follow the action from

the train arriving in Warsaw, Brandt stepping down from the train, the visit to the memorial, all the way to laying the wreath and the Chancellor kneeling in silence surrounded by masses, political dignitaries and reporters.

The role of Brandt is played by Kopljar himself, of course, which gives a sense of performance to this film’s mise en scène: dressed in the luminescent suit he’s been using in his recent film ‘appearances’, with an unambiguous symbolical message of the artist as a torchbearer in the world of light, Kopljar repeats the gesture that was remembered in the world as a gesture of symbolical humility before the victims of a crime, responsibility for which, both political and moral, is borne collectively. (Ivana Mance)

In colaboration: direktor fotografije: Boris Poljak, editing: Damir Čučić, sound: Martin Semenčić, sound: Goran Štrbac, costume design: Tonči Vladislavić, line producer: Krešimir Bradica

Thanks: Instytut Adama Mickiewicza, Mercedes-Benz, Alicja Lyszkowicz, Ania Rzepka, Isabella Czarnowska.

K15 is produced by Drugi Plan, supported by HAVC- Croatian Audio Visual Centre