26/11/2024 - The found-footage film by veteran Polish documentarian Maciej J Drygas, which is the result of ten years’ work, really lets the mind wander

If anyone were to doubt that watching trains passing by – carrying cargo or people – for 80 minutes could be a deeply intellectual and meditative experience, Trains [+see also:
interview: Maciej J Drygas
film profile] may change their minds. The film consists of almost 600 shots – all black and white – plucked from 46 archives from all over the world, and is the result of ten years’ work by Polish documentary director Maciej J Drygas. It earned him the Best Film Award and Best Editing for Rafał Listopad at the recently concluded IDFA (see the news), and it screened later in the brand-new Doc@PÖFF section of the Black Nights Film Festival.

With no dialogue, the film's power lies in its sound effects created by Saulius Urbanavicius and music by Paweł Szymański, which convey everything from unease and menace to moments of beauty and joy. In many ways, the soundtrack becomes a reflection of the 20th century itself, along with all its beauty and terror. Yet none of these – as Rilke would have put it – are final feelings. The act of passing through is reflected in the images, too, echoing, toute proportion gardée, the works of Godfrey Reggio.

The trains themselves serve as the steel protagonists of Drygas’s film; they’re passing through space and time, from the early-1900s railway factories, through the fringes of two world wars, via the immense tragedy of the concentration camps, to the displacement that followed the conflict and the efforts to rebuild a normal life. They also observe quieter moments, such as balls thrown inside the carriages, commutes, or meals eaten quietly between the origin and the destination. Drygas and his research team mainly picked footage showing the underbelly of history, and the price that regular folks paid for progress and expansion – which were also facilitated by trains, since it was this mobility that allowed the transportation of both humans and bombs from one side of the continent to the other. And the mutilated faces of soldiers and the dead bodies of Dachau prisoners are a reminder of that. The grim quote from Kafka, “There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe... But not for us,” opening the doc, underlines this.

The passengers depicted in the film are mostly anonymous, yet some – like Adolf Hitler and Charlie Chaplin – are infamous or famous figures. Chaplin appears as his iconic Tramp character, travelling privately and being greeted by fans. This connection between trains, cinema and the camera is significant, as one of the earliest films ever made, the Lumière brothers' The Arrival of a Train, is itself a moment of cinematic history. Trains is not just a technical achievement – a skilful and patient result of working with archives – but also a meditation on the moral weight and responsibility of images. The camera is not just a silent witness; it can be an accomplice, too. Drygas, whose previous documentaries (such as Hear My Cry and One Day in the Polish People’s Republic) focused on the victims and daily hardships of living under the dictatorship, continues his artistic exploration of history with Trains. The film takes his interest in memory and trauma to new depths (or, pun intended, to its next stop), also offering a reflection on the human cost of progress.

Trains was produced by Drygas Film Production (Poland), and co-produced by Era Film (Lithuania), Fixafilm (Poland) and Telewizja Polska SA. Its world sales rights are up for grabs.