About Dancing in the Corner

In Dancing in the Corner’s  post-communist Poland, football takes center stage. It is both a reflection of the dwindling health of the country and a bond between father and son. Lulled by the director’s voice over, the film manages to tell us a whole life story, from the first memory to adult disillusionment. In this unabashedly melancholic film, actors come and go with time and scenes echo one another in a fascinating series of leitmotivs. 

Jan Bujnowski’s interview

A Football Kid

“Football is a significant part of my life. I have been practicing this sport since childhood, and I still try to play regularly. For me, it's actually the only truly relaxing moment when I can unplug. When I started writing the script, I was looking for an activity that has connected me with my father over the years, and it seemed like an obvious choice. There were a lot of other young children living on the same block, and one of their pastimes was asking my father to kick the ball as high as he could. I remember the excited screams of the children as the ball soared, and being a very young child, I sometimes really felt that it almost disappeared from sight and would never come back down.”

Leitmotivs

“From the beginning, I knew that the story would depict various stages of a character's life, which would be tricky to pull off. It became clear that I would use several repetitions and leitmotivs to shorten the time needed to tell the story. A simple example: at the end of the second scene, the character lists the goals scored by the Polish national team. He also lists them a few scenes later but then they take on a completely different meaning. This repetition allowed us to set the scene clearly and to convey emotions without providing too much information. It also leaves viewers space to come to their own conclusion.”

Dancing in the corner 

“The phrase "Dancing in the Corner," was uttered by a football commentator during the 1982 World Cup as Poland was playing against the USSR. In the final minutes of the game, as a delaying tactic, Polish midfielder Włodzimierz Smolarek heroically shielded the ball in the corner of the field, which over the years has become almost legendary and is remembered as "dancing in the corner." Interestingly, years later, the only thing people remember about this match is the dance, because not only did we not win that game, but we didn't score a single goal.

I also like to think of it in a broader context, as a situation of Poland as a country aspiring to play some role on the international stage, but always remaining on the edge, too far from the center.” 

Poland After the Fall of Communism

“This period in Polish history interests me because it is a transitional stage, and in such stages, human characters are most sharply defined. Crisis and transitional moments seem particularly conducive to storytelling, and moreover, it's easiest to assess from a distance whether something was indeed a crisis moment. I wish for all of us that we could only talk about crisis moments that have occurred in the past, but unfortunately, I'm afraid reality may quickly verify this.”