We screened "Rocks in my pockets" at Etiuda&Anima 2014. This Friday, we will show it again –this time with the participation of the director herself, Signe Baumane. During the meeting with the festival's audience and Cracovian students, the artist will tell us about all shades of madness.
Animated film for adults, based on Signe Baumane's family story. A tale of five women from Baumane’s family, including herself, who struggle with depression and madness. In this at once bitter and humour-saturated film, the history of Latvia is intertwined with personal issues and family secrets. “Rocks in my pockets” was selected as the Latvian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards in 2015.
“Rocks in a pocket from the film's title subtly underline its main theme: suicidal tendencies in the female line of Baumane's family. The director tells the story of five relatives, whose biographies, unfolding in the 20th century Latvia, reveal a distinctive common feature – madness. Autodestruction, which seems to be passed down through the distaff side, does not bear any resemblance to the existential rebellion that we know from the writings of Virginia Woolf, who used to carry „stones in her pockets”, too. The instinct of death in women from Baumane's family is rooted in their helpless and powerless position towards men and the world in general. The family flaw, which origin – hereditary or environmental – remains uncertain, inspired the artist to animate an intimate herstory, awakening the demons of the past. Baumane does not show the story of her family through pictures or diaries – she does it through mental hopsital patients' files.”
Barbara Szczekała, Resuscitation of Memory, „EKRANy” 2015, nr 1 (23), s. 41
Signe Baumane and her crazy search for a common sense in Rocks in My Pockets
Rocks in My Pocket
(dir. Signe Baumane, Latvia/USA 2014, 88’)
25th November (Friday), 8:00 PM
Kijów Centrum – Main Room
AGH Faculty of Humanities MOVIE NIGHT
Under the patronage of the Dean of the AGH UST Faculty of Humanities
