................................. MARIKA. KRAJNIEWSKA......
PORTUGUESE DIRECTOR AND SCRIPTWRITER, PRESENTED IN 2012 WITH THE ALBERT R. BROCCOLI AWARD. IN 2011 SHE DIRECTED HER FIRST SHORT FILM, MK SPITFIRE, AND IN 2012, HER SECOND, AS THE DAYS WENT BY. HER FILMS HAVE BEEN SCREENED AROUND THE WORLD IN
USA, FRANCE, PORTUGAL, POLAND,
KAZAKHSTAN, THAILAND, GHANA AND BRAZIL – INCLUDING THE OFFICIAL SELECTION AT CAMERIMAGE FILM FESTIVAL 2013. IN THE MEANWHILE, SHE HAS BEEN WORKING AS ASSISTANT DIRECTOR IN BOTH TV AND CINEMA INCLUDING THE FEATURE NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON, DIRECTED BY BILLE AUGUST
– THAT HAD ITS PREMIERE AT BERLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL-, AND THE 26 EPISODE SERIES ENTITLED OS FILHOS DO ROCK, DIRECTED BY PEDRO VARELA AND STREAMED AT THE PORTUGUESE NATIONAL TV, RTP. WHILE AS THE DAYS WENT BY IS GOING AROUND THE FESTIVALS CIRCUIT, FILIPA IS ALREADY WORKING ON HER NEXT
PROJECT.
With its beauty and melancholy, As The Days Went By is a psychologically complex portrayal of the dyna mics of love. Keeping dialogue to a wonderful minimum, Filipa Ruiz closely follows the intimate details and rhythms of her characters ' daily life. The story of Hans, a writer seeking for inspiration, and his unconfessed love for Jenny is told with a mixture of naturalism and magic realism that infuses everyday life with a special vibrancy. And behind the came ra, the talented director uses an energetic narrative structure to inject unexpected images and fresh emotions into the film. We are pleased to present Filipa Ruiz for this year ' s WomenCinemakers Edition. Filipa, tell us about your trajectory as a filmmaker. What inspired you to express yourself in this medium?
I understand Arts as the medium that human beings found to preserve their memory through time. It through pain tings, photographs, sculptures, writings even music and architecture that we are able to know and study the human being from pre-historical times till modern times. Art is a cultural record, and people have always fascinated me.
My trajectory into filmmaking happened in such a natural way I always loved painting, writing, and photography has always been with me as well. I attended the Fine Arts University for my Bachelor degree in Lisbon, and soon I flew to Finland where I wanted to continue my studies. Cinema is known as the Seventh Art as it synthetizes all the traditional arts together( the spatial arts and the temporal arts). When one thinks that to make a film one has to go from a written script into drawing shots, building sets, developing characters, music composi tions... being an Art lover, I easily found this being the medium I would like to express myself in. My inspiration is People, absolutely. And my will is to instill hope.
As The Days Went By is a poetic and immersive film. What attracted you to this project?
At the time I was making some studies on the essence of where the artists get their inspiration from. I went to visit a friend of mine in Barcelona. He collects everything he might find interesting from the street or objects that people give him and he builds his own pieces out of it. Every item in his house is unique, and has his handprint on it. The lights built with nets shading the rooms in different textures, his bed built over long wooden structures which allows you to walk under it, he places canvas over walls that he covered with pages from his favorite musical orchestrations and projects images over it and so on. It became this one whole installation, which I believe that reflects both his soul and the world he is in. I wrote some notes down and started building my own character.
For me, the way artists think they are seen by the society and how the society gets reflected on them plays a major role in the art they produce. Artists are observers by nature. But it was only when I visited my sister, she was living in Denmark by then, that the story took form. I visited Hans Christian Anderson house in Odense and it was there that I had the opportunity to read some of his diary notes. I was surprised to find out that they fit exactly in the line of thoughts I was