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ABSTRACT
Marcel Lozlnskl's feature documentary Jak żyć/ How to Live bends and overturns observational and cinema vértté conventions In a caustic tale of leisure under socialist rule. The editing shapes the alternate roles of camera as observer, participant and Intruder, and builds a representation that stands as the performance of a documentary film. Erving Goffman's theory of social performativity and Helmuth Plessner's analysis of community allow for a reading of the formal qualities of the film as necessarily determined by the subject of the representation - that of a society constrained by a system where performance is a form of survival.
INTRODUCTION
Made in 1977 but first screened in 1981, Marcel Lozinski's first feature film Jak żyć/ How to Live escapes categories as it veers in and out of documentary mode, and slides between observational account and satirical attack within a cautionary tale that feels comical but leaves a tragic aftertaste. [1] The filmmaker infiltrates actors among the participants at a Union of Young Polish Socialists summer camp, and films the development of the situations provoked by their staged personas - some are supposed to be active promoters of the rules of the camp, others are directed to oppose this social frame. [2] While young couples get settled for spending two summer weeks at the camp, the board committee proceeds to organize public meetings in which to formulate and communicate the rather strict functioning rules. The socialist model of organized leisure implies continuous work and consistent self-improvement through education. In order to stimulate the implementation of these ideals within a communal setting, the camp leaders launch an "exemplary family contest" that requires everyone to engage in an active watching of the familial habits of their neighbors. While most of the participants go along, one family choses not to comply, privately assessing the whole situation as a farce. Their differing stand is officially reprimanded by the leaders, and later violently punished by the camp members. Alone and isolated, the dissidents are overpowered by the majority conforming to the seemingly absurd setting.
Journalist and filmmaker Jan Str&ecedil;kowski wrote about the film: "The protagonists did not know that Łoziński controlled several of the key campers, that they were acting and that, consequently, the situations they provoked would...