Dinner with Shooting Stars
An interview with Magdalena Jaroszewicz, director of Shooting Stars
What was your interest in picturing firecrackers festivities?
Back in 2017 I was living on the most lively street in Berlin and I heard legends about how loud and crazy this street gets on New Year’s Eve. So I wanted to document this night of madness and freedom, understand its symbolic meaning for the people from all over the world. I was flashed by the energy and mixed feelings of foolhardiness and fear that people brings upon each other. I wanted to talk about it through images and free sound associations. It’s a midnight song about masculinity, joy and rivalry.
How did you work on the lighting?
With Louis Marioth, who is also our soundman, we decided to shoot from an apartment located on the opposite side of the street. We used long lenses that are fragile to any intemperate movement and knew that therefore, light would be limited, but we decided to work with what we had. That’s why the picture is not perfect, and we also decided not to hide our presence nor the technical aspects of filming. I didn’t want to over aestheticize the image, I wanted to be in the film as an eye.
Why did you want the whole shooting to be done in just one night?
Before making Shooting Stars I was developing another film – a longer story about one girl living in that block. This film unfortunately was never made. What was left was a certain need to share with others a portrait of a place that fascinates me. The idea came spontaneously only a few days before. I figured out that I cannot really be inside this world and so I will stay – as I am – an outsider who can have limited access to people but who has a need to understand them and give them a field to express themselves. It’s a momentum – I show a limited moment in time, reflection of a mood, feeling or a state of mind. It is as deep as one can see, I realized that this is the way for this film to exist and be an evidence of this night existence.
Why were you interested in focusing on people’s faces instead of the lights?
I have two reasons. I grew up with dogs, I hate fireworks as they make all animals suffer. That’s a personal reason. Secondly, it’s a film about people and their emotions, about modern society and its obsessions. The lights don’t transpose these kinds of topics, people’s faces can.
Would you say that the short film format has given you any particular freedom?
I love short films, as I love short stories, they inspire me a lot in my work. It’s freeing to focus on fragments that are important and let yourself be amazed by something so small and so big at the same time. Short film can be a blaze or an earthquake. Now I am working on a feature film and I see this freedom and lightness drifting away. I hope to continue making short films as long as I live.
Shooting Stars is being shown in Lab Competition L2.
