Watch the Documentary “The Whale”!
On the morning of 8th December 2017, those inhabitants of Warsaw on their way to work and school simply couldn’t believe their eyes. They were awestruck by what they saw on a sandy Vistula riverbank, just by Poniatowski Bridge in the city centre.
A huge, motionless creature was lying there – a 15-metres-long whale. Before we revealed that the sperm whale was actually a sculpture created by the Belgian art collective Captain Boomer, brought to Warsaw by the “Przekrój” quarterly team, we managed to achieve our goal. This sculpture provoked people to stop, be surprised and pose questions. Is it real? How on Earth did it get here? Is it because of us?, people wondered.
We invite you to watch The Whale – a short documentary directed by Iza Pająk about the events of that day – and to read more about what happened here. The film portrays our society and shows how close we are to ecological disaster at the moment. For the past two years, we have been presenting the documentary at various film festivals, which is why we weren’t able to show it to a broader audience any earlier. The festival round proved to be very successful. The film has won awards all over the world – among others, it was given the Audience Award for Best Experimental Short at Red Rock Film Festival in 2018, it won Best Short Documentary at Canberra Short Film Festival in 2018, and it came back from the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival with the Jury Award for Best Mini Doc Film in 2020.
Written and directed by
Izabela Pająk
Director of Photography
Józefina Gocman
Production
PRZEKRÓJ Foundation
Sound
Marcin “Barry” Popławski
Edited by
Izabela Pająk PSM
Producer
Kamila Boruc-Adamska
Camera assistant
Bernard Wnorowski
Drone areal cinematography
d’Erceville Regiment Sp. z o.o. Jan Międzybłocki Paweł Jaroszewicz
Colour correction
Grzegorz Pająk
Graphics
Grzegorz Pająk
Online
Bernard Wnorowski
Sound mixing
Jacek Onaszkiewicz / Locomotive
Equipment
Kamerra.pl
Translation
Jan Dzierzgowski
The “Przekrój” staff would like to thank the following people and institutions for their help and cooperation: Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Warsaw Department of Parks and Recreation, Kuchnia Konfliktu, MOSiR Poranki i Wieczory, Kacper Kozarzewski and Andrzej Piotrowski
