SSF: “Katedra”

…The reds, yellows, and blues of Madeleine shine like dawn through the ribs of the Cathedral, everything here is either in shadow or painted with viscous colors. I’ll sit, I’ll quiet my heart. I thought that it would be mainly fear, an animal terror, but I feel only regret now, a great, motionless, heavy regret, the squeezing weight of dark water. No thoughts, no instructions for the body, even my eyes are dry. There is only a little tightening in my chest. But why speak, silence is better …

I’ve written about the work of the Oscar-nominated Polish animator Tomasz Bagiński in the past, but a conversation over the weekend with some friends regarding his latest project — an uber-secret sci-fi “special film project” named (fittingly, I suspect) Ambition — reminded me of his Katedra (The Cathedral), which is an extraordinary bit of animation, bursting with imagination.

Go HERE. And watch it.

I can wait.

You won’t be sorry.

Seriously. Just CLICK.

…

Done?

For years, I’ve wondered why that short (and its images) seem so familiar to me, even when I was watching them for the first time. Recently, however, I discovered the source material for Bagiński’s work — a short story from Polish sci-fi writer Jacek Dukaj — and saw that it was dedicated to “the memory of Antoni Gaudí and the art of his imagination.” And then I realized that I’ve been seeing Gaudí’s Sagrada Família in Bagiński’s short all this time.

Interestingly (and not obviously from the short), the character in Dukaj’s original story is actually a priest. Which is partially why I think the short stuck so firmly in my Synod-addled mind over the weekend. There’s something here to be teased out, if I could just find it. “Fragments of a single work, awaiting the Architect.”

Judging from the sky. . . Farther and farther, slower and slower. How many days is it since I lowered my hand? Heavier still. I have to prop myself up against the altar. They‘re congregating in the nave. The Cathedral is enfolding us, we are the Cathedral, fragments of the mass, of a single work of art. Peacefully now among the shadows fluttering like butter-flies. Only my shadow thrown motionless from the tabernacle.

We await the Architect.

Attribution(s): All artwork, publicity images, and stills are the property of Platige Shorts and all respective creators and/or distributors.