Talking Shorts: The Cost of Being a (Female) Ghost by Magdalena Walo

The text was created as part of the Talking Shorts workshop during Ale Kino! Pro at the 43rd Ale Kino! Festival.

Magdalena Walo reviews „Come, come, my little lamb” by Kinga Anna Garncarz

Imagine a scenario where an emerging film school director decides to create a short animation based on a fragment of William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.” However, she chooses to tell the entire story from the perspective of the secondary character Lady Macduff, giving the heroine completely new traits and an alternative backstory. Kinga Anna Garncarz took on this risky task, tackling a text that is not only required reading for generations of Polish students, but was also formative, rebellious, and empowering for an entire nation living under partitions at the time of its creation.

Ghosts, a virgin, and a spirited folk dance in a wistful tale of loss. The short animated film “Come, come, my little lamb” by Garncarz, which was screened at the International Young Audience Film Festival Ale Kino! in Poznań, is a bold, herstory-driven attempt to reinterpret a canonical work of Polish Romanticism such as Adam Mickiewicz’s “Forefathers’ Eve’ (“Dziady”). Yet, this reimagining raises questions about what kind of feminist revision we are witnessing – one that liberates or one that confines.

The fragment from “Forefathers’ Eve” by national bard Adam Mickiewicz that the Polish director chose appears to be the most recognizable and accessible part of the entire drama. This Slavic magical ritual, in which spirits rise from their graves to share their tragic stories, has been repeatedly referenced in popular culture – from a song by the popular Polish band Kult to the globally recognized phenomenon of “The Witcher” universe created by Andrzej Sapkowski. What seems unique about the young Polish director’s perspective is her choice to tell the story of a heroine barely sketched in the pages of part II of the national drama. In Mickiewicz’s “Forefathers’ Eve”, Zosia is depicted as an independent, even defiant character – a young woman who enjoyed dancing with herself, showing no interest in men. The twist in Garncarz’s interpretation, however, is that instead of preserving this autonomous spirit, the director adds to the fate of the prematurely deceased village girl a tragic story of violent sexual exploitation.

The main character of “Come, come, my little lamb” is a shepherdess named Zosia. By day, she grazes her small flock of titular lambs; come evening, she spends time at spirited dances among the local community, thoroughly enjoying her own company. As luck has It, her uninhibited dancing catches the attention of one of the men. It is at this moment that Garncarz replaces Mickiewicz’s story with her own overwritten tale and the short focuses on the fate of a maiden who seems too liberated for local standards and thus exposed to male predators. As a result, the on-screen Zosia reminds one of Jagna from Nobel laureate Władysław Reymont’s “The Peasants” (recently successfully adapted by the duo Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman) or the heroines of Joanna Kuciel-Frydryszak’s bestselling reportage “Chłopki. Opowieść o naszych babkach” („Peasant Women: A Story About Our Grandmothers”) rather than the character from “Forefathers’ Eve”.

Where the Polish bard merely suggests the possibility of posthumous romantic or even sexual fulfillment for the young girl, the director finds potential danger, creating a surprisingly conservative vision of femininity filled with longing for motherhood and fieldwork, what is visible in the scene where Zosia,  already after her death, wistfully observes the women working in the field. This choice transforms an independent character into one whose desires are confined within conventional feminine duties, undermining the progressive potential of feminist revision.

Garncarz avoids explicitness. Her 2D animation is simple and rather stylized, at times resembling pastel sketches. However, the director’s deliberate use of color deserves appreciation for its narrative function. Through palette alone, she subtly separates the different parts of the film: the forest containing the cemetery and church reminiscent of an Orthodox church associated with Eastern religiosity is rendered in dark, earthy tones, while the dance sequences burst with bright, vibrant hues evoking the folk-inspired paintings of Zofia Stryjeńska and her series depicting Polish traditional folklore dance. The main character also stands out through color, sharply contrasting with the local population through her subtlety. Zosia is a blonde dressed in light gowns – blue and white, gradually becoming more translucent and ethereal. What distinguishes the film beyond color is its musical layer, created by the band Hanok, which specializes in funeral songs among other genres. Incantations and ritual chants reminiscent of folk religious singing based on the drama’s words serve as the only cinematic commentary, devoid of classical narration.

The audacious idea of telling Zosia’s story in a refreshed, revisionist form could have been an opportunity to create a fully realized, unconventional, and liberated rural heroine. Instead, Garncarz made the girl a victim of male dominance, not even giving her a chance for revenge or any other form of finding posthumous peace.