The Performance of Documentary:
Live Recordings from a Closed System in Marcel Lozinski’s How to Live

The observational register of images shows people’s behavior as a group. We see faces, gestures, and reactions while we hear the words of speakers – in public meetings, in gatherings, or throughout the camp. At the first general meeting, the campers are given this announcement:

Tomorrow morning we have a solemn camp opening. Your presence is obligatory. You are all required to wear your uniforms. The first order will be announced tomorrow. You must remember that this is a camp, by no means to be treated as a holiday. This is a leisure and training camp. We are here to spend time on activity and training. Parents are requested to take care of their kids and quiet them down as they disturb you and the organizers. We hope that you will observe the discipline that we will try to impose.

While for the viewers of the film these words sound absurd and incommensurate with the context, the campers have a different reaction – seemingly distracted, possibly bored, acting like they have heard these things before, they glance apathetically in different directions, some of them chatting and smiling softly, while their kids are roaming around the room. This attitude speaks for the behavioral adaptation to a system where the concept of  ‘leisure’ is reappropriated and repurposed: “Virtuous socialist leisure was understood in communist morality as productive or reproductive activity. […] Socialist leisure was charged with realizing the untapped potential of the working classes for self-development.” (Crowley and Read, 33) Over decades, the empty rhetoric of slogans against a background of needs and dysfunctions leveled the public’s expectations into a resigned apathy. Thus, what appears as absurd for the film viewer sounds as plain routine-rhetoric for the meeting participant. Charles Eidsvik identifies this blazé attitude as a source of culturally informed comedy:

To a Western viewer, the first experience of viewing Eastern European film comedies in the company of Eastern European is apt to be unsettling. Often, the films do not appear to be comedies in the usual American sense. […] In Eastern Europe, the mood of humor is ignited by an appreciation of the ridiculousness inherent in futile plans and hopes. (91, 103)

The comical quality of the sequence comes from the incongruity between the official tone of the spoken message, and the listeners’ reactions as a form coping mechanism with the institutional frame and an expression of an interiority at odds with the cartoonish roles assigned to them. Helmuth Plessner assesses the role of form in the public realm of human communication: “The observation of the forms has the same meaning as following rules of a game, through which public life – the persons who appear to each other in functions, in roles – becomes in its unique nature a game.”(134) During the public meetings and gatherings, the camp participants cannot freely adopt roles other than the ones strictly assigned – as if following rules for a different type of game, a public enactment of a tightly controlled performance in which people have no liberty to navigate between different social positions. But, as Plessner beautifully asserts, “an elementary physical need, a play drive [Spiletrieb], governs the organic world. Even human relations must do justice to this drive (consciously or unconsciously), regardless of whether it concerns cheerful or serious life situations.”(146) If the participants seem untouched by the absurdity that rings loudly in the ears of the external viewer, they do not remain inert and dead-faced either, as their liveliness seems triggered by sources originating in this play drive. The incongruence between the façade they strive to maintain and the bursting of life refusing the constraint of form recalls Plessner’s understanding of the source of ridicule as “pure emotion – free expression of the soul, its direct articulation, genuine absence of restraint in the manifestation of the judgment, as well as in actions or facial expressions.” (117) In a paradoxical way, these public gatherings allow for a maximum freedom of behavior within a controlled setting, as people retain the ability to be themselves when in a group, despite the expectations of them ‘playing’ their assigned roles. The figure of authority is deemed derisory, there is no real sense of threat – the viewer thus indulges in the comical contrast, while she possibly recognizes many of the participants’ attitudes as familiar. In this scene, while the camera movements and the editing preserve the feeling of a documentary recording, the manipulation of sound in relation to the visuals suggests the first act of the film’s performance as a documentary. What is revealed, besides the oppressing setting of the camp, is the dynamic of a collective, yet passive, form of resistance.

While maintaining a seemingly observational mode, the camera documents different moments from the setting and launching of the ‘exemplary family’ contest. From the board meeting, we learn that the contest will run throughout all activities and duration of the camp, that all the board members will constitute the jury while they will pursue their duties confidentially and under anonymity, such that participants should not attempt to buy favors – this may be expected, camp manager Leszek Banachowski explains, as the prize of the contest is “very attractive, namely a washing machine.” Zyman, the camp participant who has just been elected as Chairman of the Camp Board during this Board meeting, proves very skilled at appropriating his new responsibilities, as he and Andrzej take turns in developing the ‘scientific’ ideology behind the contest initiative:

Andrzej: The jurors should observe daily life in all its aspects. In sociology, it’s called participant observation. You could, of course, learn about how the spouses relate to each other by asking them directly… But why do that? If you could, for example, eavesdrop on their conversation at lunch…

Zyman: It is great that it leads to a close day-to-day observation of oneself, one’s family, as well as of other families. And although as jury members we will remain anonymous, this may put us nonetheless under a degree of pressure. But I think we’ll win this one, take the bull by the horns. We’ll bear the burden of responsibility because in the end…

Andrzej: I think it’s damn important because what will follow from this endeavor is how to live. We want to model it and demonstrate that we care. That it’s a sort of school of life – social, political life… in all its aspects.

Later, during a public call, the camp participants are informed of what is expected from them. They will be observed on certain aspects of marital life, on their attitude towards their own and others’ children, on how they treat their spouses. They are encouraged to submit written comments about what they see or experience using the especially installed comments box. While they “are requested to behave as usual, as they normally do,” they are offered “in exchange” (sic!) “a big prize,” that however is divulged only in terms of its unusual money value.

Here we see the emergence of multiple layers of performance. At the profilmic level, the whole contest is framed as a performance game. The people are requested to behave “as usual,” while at the same time they will be rewarded only if they perform successfully the roles assigned to them as members of the model socialist family – in this context thus, pretense, spying and informing on others are not just encouraged, but rewarded. The contradiction between the (privately declared) ideological scope of the contest – the modeling of “how to live” through “a school of life” of sorts -, and the (publicly announced) material incentive of an expensive object outside the affordable range of most of the members, suggests another type of performance triggered by a systemic malfunction with deeper roots, as Ina Merkel explains:

[O]fficial consumption policies attempted to serve both interests [of the ideal of rational consumption norms and collective ownership of property as against individual requirements and expectations], but ultimately all decisions were made according to the priorities of economic policy. These were often in opposition to communist ideals and tacitly promoted something that should actually have been a matter of contention: the individual striving for possessions and for distinction. (61)

In the socialist community of the camp, this “individual striving for possessions and for distinction” is disavowed in the closed-doors meeting when Banachowski warns against people’s inclination to buying favors, but is publicly endorsed through the alluring offer of an attractive award to be won by one, individual, couple. As such, the goal of the competition has a dual character, as it is differently stated for distinct audiences – while it has to be ideological for the purpose of the rhetoric within the leaders’ circle, it becomes consumer-oriented in the practical context of the people’s interaction, recalling Plessner’s incompatibility between the envisioned functioning of the ideal-based community and the individual realities of life. (95)

From observer of the settings, the camera becomes gradually a participant in the camp activities and in the contest, engendering at its turn different types of performance. Initially, the camera adopts the participatory style of cinéma vérité, as it accompanies two board members while they approach a couple busy with cleaning their summer cabin to interview each spouse separately. The framing emphasis on close ups, the jerky moves of camera with rushed pannings from one subject to the other and sudden zoom-in adjustments, as well as the interview participants’ openness and casual manners (through the lighting of cigarettes together) create a sense of spontaneity and documentary authenticity that legitimizes the camera’s presence and softens the intruding character of the questions. When asked if they quarrel with each other, the interviewees give contradictory answers which leave them vulnerable to the judge’s assessment of their performance as a couple. Under the appearance of a friendly documentary interview lies the subtext of an aggression meant to cancel the private sphere of the couple, and to perturb the balance of their intimacy. Here the camp is shown as a community in which the expectation is “the complete renunciation of the individual without remainder” and where “the emotional connection to all arises not from the participation in a secret withheld from other persons, but from the consciousness that there must not be any secrets withheld from each other at all.” (Plessner, 87)

The climate of pervasive surveillance induces a subtle absurd dynamic that is made visible within the transparent documentary appearance through another type of camera performance. Throughout a consistent pattern, the camera catches as if by chance the characters that structure the film’s narrative. While never shedding its documentarian mask, the camera films events, meetings or seemingly random activities from angles that capture, somewhere in the background or in a corner of the frame, always the same characters passing by or interacting in a telling way. The editing enhances these carefully constructed chance images through shot/counter-shot sequences that suggest virtual spaces and connections often based on supposed lines of sight, and that result in different combinations of cognitive and affective viewer reactions. The family of three from chalet 43 (I will refer to them as Rozhin family, as they are identified in the film’s end credits) gradually becomes the focus of the narrative. The editing suggests that they can see from their cabin the setting and beginning of the public meeting. While the camera is seemingly recording the meeting proceedings, they walk into the frame as they arrive late and somehow disturb the audience listening to the announcement of the contest. Besides this little commotion, the camera follows the somewhat smiley expressions on their faces, their awkward movements to get in line, and the whispered exchange between the spouses – all these against the background of the camp director’s speech detailing the types of familial interactions observed as criteria for the contest. Their behavior is thus framed as different, and standing out as daring in a context where the expectation is of conformity. Later throughout the film, Zyman would repeatedly approach Mrs. Rozhin, the woman from the misbehaving family, with unsuccessful attempts at interrogating her about her family life. Each time, the camera, unlike in the cinéma vérité style interviews, would stay at a distance and enhance the uneasy feeling of the interaction. At the same time, while Chairman Zyman becomes more convincing in the sneaky role of the stalker, his zealous performance has the effect of increasing the couple’s non-participatory resistance.

While the initial establishing of its documentary function is never revisited or re-addressed, the camera takes various liberties throughout its implied attributions. In the context of this film, the documentary mode is based within an indexical relation between the object and its representation, expressed through the preservation of a distance that guarantees the ontological condition of a certain ‘reality’ rendered visible through a legitimate apparatus. Once this distance is modified or in some other ways betrayed, the camera deviates from its original function, and orphaned from the authorial figure of the documentary film crew, seems to operate ghostly on its own account. As part of the surveillance game, the camera mirrors the behavior of the Board members, at times appropriating their point of view. The rule of the game is the cancelling of the distance between people’s private and public lives. But trough an ironical editing, the film suggests that the camera gets access to more than any participant would ever admit of wanting to know. Such a sequence is the one that constructs the (visibly false) continuity between a moment of camp observation conducted by the doctor, and a woman undressing in the window of her cabin. During the same observation, the doctor seemingly overhears, and sees from the distance through a window, a heated discussion between Zyman and his wife. The question arises: whom is the camera representing here? Rather than spying on the summer camp participants, the filmic device seems to step back and observe the behavior of the spies themselves. At its most performative, the film here both maintains, and plays around with, the documentary front (in Goffman’s sense) through irreverent means that challenge, mock and reappropriate the conventions.

Some of the most disturbing moments of bending and blurring of documentary conventions take place during the interviewing of children. Defenseless and socially immature, the children offer accessible entry points into the intimacy of the families. In society, Plessner believes, “the soul needs to be clothed with form so that it also remains on the surface what it is in its invisible depths.”(119) However, he admits the existence of psychological beings that can express themselves without the armor of the form, and that can successfully support the risk of ridicule.

[T]he simplicity of our inner being – completely plain, elemental and given immediately – takes the weapon of irony out of our hands through its absolute vulnerability, its lack of assertion. Total unintentionality, simplicity, and honesty in self-experience and expression, as well as the ultimate plainness of feeling, willing and thinking in which we are all rooted belong to what is necessary in order to create this kind of effect. (120)

The children are exactly these psychological beings, vulnerable because they wear their souls on their sleeve, not yet knowing how to take on a mask or adopt a role otherwise necessary to fend the risk of ridicule. The Board members take advantage of this, and assault them with painfully intrusive questions. The film carefully composes its documentary performance: on the one hand, the camera hides beyond branches, or stays at a safe distance not to distract the little ones, while capturing their testimonies that are heart-warming in their honesty. On the other hand, both Andrzej and Zyman are skilled impersonators of their own disgraceful roles (if we don’t recognize them from previous films made by Lozinski, their names are disclosed on the film end credits as part of the few acting participants), but their performance is chilling in its collapsing of the distinction between abuse and its representation. The actors put on here a double performance, a performance within another performance – we see them as playing the Board members, who, in turn, pretend to be friends with little Klaudyna in order to obtain from her information about her parents. The striking contrast between this layered masking and the naked vulnerability of the girl stands as a repulsive incongruity that threatens the viewer, and that recalls Goffman’s assertion:

Paradoxically, the more closely the impostor’s performance approximates to the real thing, the more intensely we may be threatened, for a competent performance by someone who proves to be an impostor may weaken in our minds the moral connection between legitimate authorization to play a part and the capacity to play it. (59)

The Board members are here skilled impostors that use the power of their functions as moral legitimization for their deceiving performance. More than taking advantage of the children’s lacking of a buffering, performative zone, or social distance, the interviewers attempt to create a negative distance by penetrating the private sphere of the families intruded upon.

However, the Rozhin couple resists this attempt, as Mrs. Rozhin repeatedly fends off Zyman’s sneaky approaches, and asks Andrzej to stay away from her daughter. This family affirms its right to privacy, and insists on keeping a distance from the public life of the camp. As if fascinated by their difference, the camera abandons its documentary position and follows them in a private conversation on the water deck. Oblivious of the filmic device (that is only momentarily acknowledged by the girl), they talk about the struggle of enjoying their leisure time together in this camp that feels like a farce, like a circus, and for which there is no alternative. This moment gives weight to the family’s overall attitude of reluctantly participating in the camp imposed activities – they chose to enjoy and make the most of their holiday time at the price of their public image. Unlike the rest of the camp participants who comply with the leveling roles assigned to them, the Rozhins stick to their individuality as a family and to their freedom of choosing what roles to play, and when to play them. But this behavior is seen as problematic in the camp community expected to function as one, extended and self-regulating family. Goffman so theorizes the challenges faced by social innovators:

If the individual takes on a task that is not only new to him but also unestablished in the society or if he attempts to change the light in which his task is viewed, he is likely to find that there are already several well established fronts among which he must choose. […] Since fronts tend to be selected, not created, we may expect trouble to arise when those who perform a given task are forced to select a suitable front for themselves from among several quite dissimilar ones. (27, 28)

The family is publicly reprimanded because it maintains a front that affirms a distance not allowed in this type of community. With these characters, Lozinski introduces a negative zone, an alternative space where people take on roles that have no correspondence in the surrounding reality of the camp. What for the Rhozyns is a conscious, assumed attitude, for the camp leaders is an unmeant gesture to be publicly attacked and farther prevented – a mechanism interestingly explained by Goffman:

The crucial point is not that the fleeting definition of the situation caused by an unmeant gesture is itself so blameworthy but rather merely that is different from the definition officially projected. This difference forces an acutely embarrassing wedge between the official projection and reality, for it is part of the official projection that it is the only possible one under the circumstances. (52)

In this sense, the bubble in which the Rozhins survive is a virtually inexistent space, as it is unconceivable under the given circumstances, and as such, it cannot be accessed by an officially sanctioned documentary camera. The filmic device recording this virtual family is freed from any profilmic authority, but mediates Lozinski’s prescriptive intervention in this cinematic recipe for life – namely, the suggestion of a serious consideration of the necessity for safeguarding one’s human dignity inside an overwhelmingly abusive system.

How to Live is built around a number of incongruities based in the opposition between two equally sanctioned realities – the reality of a socialist leisure summer camp that is slowly taken over by the reality of a community regulated through reciprocal surveillance. The second term of this opposition is set up as a contest, or a game, designed as the appearance in this incongruity. However, a disregard of the rules set forth within the plane of ‘appearance’ drastically affects one couple’s ability to live within the plane of ‘reality’. The film suggests a reversal of the profilmic – established opposing planes – the oppressive context framed by the camp leaders as playful appearance is actually the reality covered up within the illusion of an organized summer camp. Far from being lesser than the appearance, this reality in fact coincides with the one of the contemporary film spectator from the Eastern Block. At the beginning of the film, where the camp participants can afford to passively refute an incipient oppression manifested rhetorically, the stakes are low, and the viewer is allowed a playful disposition and the perception of the situation as comical. Gradually though, the discomfort grows, the threat seeps in, and the humorous suggestion is slowly replaced by a bitter form of painful sarcasm. The more creatively the documentary performs the representations of the abuse, the deeper and more disturbing its effect on a viewer caught in between filmic modes of address.

So, while frozen on the viewer’s face, is the smile also frozen in time? What is left from a puzzling film claimed as a documentary by its author, taken as a threat by the Polish censors of the time, and frantically recuperated within recent screenings of Lozinski’s works? Through an arguably unequalled reworking of documentary conventions, Lozinski holds up to the viewer a disturbing mirror in which she sees more than her own reflection. With an accuracy allowed only by the work of imagination, the film documents the timeless danger posed by the conformity to any abusive system that deceives its subjects into complacent submission.

Bibliography

Crowley, David, Susan Read. “Introduction” in David Crowley and Susan E. Reid, ed. Pleasures in Socialism. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2010. Print.

Eidsvik, Charles. “Mock Realism: The Comedy of Futility” in Andrew Horton, ed. Comedy/Cinema/Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Print.

Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books, 1959. Print.

Merkel, Ina. “Luxury in Socialism” in David Crowley and Susan E. Reid, ed. Pleasures in Socialism. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2010. Print.

Morris, Pam, ed. The Bakhtin Reader. London: Edward Arnold, 1994. Print.

Palmer, Jery. Taking Humour Seriously. London: Routledge, 1994. Print.

Plessner, Helmuth. The Limits of Community. New York: Humanity Books, 1999. Print.

Strękowski, Jan. “Marcel Lozinski.” March 2004. http://culture.pl/en/artist/marcel-lozinski