The Peasants

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Working from studios in Poland, Serbia, Lithuania and Ukraine, the animators tallied more than a quarter of a million man-hours between them, painting under two frames per day — half the output they were able to achieve on “Loving Vincent.” Nearly three-quarters of the painters employed on that film ultimately had to leave “The Peasants”“because they didn’t have the techniques, the skills to reach this level of realism,” says D.K. Reymont was born in the village of Kobiele Wielkie, near Radomsko, as one of the nine children of Józef Rejment, an organist. His mother, Antonina Kupczyńska, had a talent for story-telling. She descended from the impoverished Polish nobility from the Kraków region. Reymont spent his childhood in Tuszyn, near Łódź, to which his father had moved to work at a wealthier church parish. Reymont was defiantly stubborn; after a few years of education in the local school, he was sent by his father to Warsaw into the care of his eldest sister and her husband to teach him his vocation. In 1885, after passing his examinations and presenting "a tail-coat, well-made", he was given the title of journeyman tailor, his only formal certificate of education. [2] Directors: DK Welchman, Hugh Welchman. Screenplay: DK Welchman, Hugh Welchman adapted from the novel "The Peasants" by Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont. Camera: Radoslaw Ladczuk. Editor: DK Welchman. Music: Lukasz Rostowski.

To do that, the filmmakers turned to a wide repertoire of realist and pre-Impressionist paintings, drawing from the work of artists from the Young Poland movement, a modernist period roughly spanning the years from 1890-1918. They were equally inspired by the evocative language of the novel itself, which “reads like a painting” in its vivid, descriptive passages, according to Hugh. Reymont harboured political leanings towards the clandestine and nationalistic National Democratic Party that was active around the time he wrote his work. a b Michalak, Ada (30 June 2023). "Jest pierwszy zwiastun filmu "Chłopi". Tworzą go twórcy "Twojego Vincenta" ". Rzeczpospolita (in Polish) . Retrieved 1 August 2023. Each of the four parts represents a season in the life of the peasants – Autumn (published in 1904), Winter (published in 1904), Spring (published in 1906), and Summer (published in 1909). This division underlines the relationship of human life with nature.Like its predecessor, The Peasants is animated in oil-paints by hand, but director DK Welchman says the new film is far more ambitious. The second context is that of the Young Poland literary and artistic movement of which Reymont was a part. As both Welchman in his foreword and Zaranko in her translator’s note point out, this is a very ‘painterly’ text. It is understandable why Welchman would choose to use Young Poland paintings as the inspiration for his animations. The approach is more impressionistic, however, than realistic. On one level, the portrayal of nature, for example, feels visceral and immediate, yet it is often inaccurate in scientific detail. But this does not detract from the overall effect. The same could be said of the language, the so-called ‘peasant-speak’, which is an impressionistic language constructed by the author, not a realistic reflection of any dialect spoken in rural Poland. The translator has therefore made the right decision to treat it with a light touch, using colourful informal speech without drawing on any British dialect, although occasionally, as she says, ‘its cadences are decidedly northern’.

Impressionism - a style in painting developed in France in the late 19th century that uses colour to show the effects of light on things and to suggest atmosphere rather than showing exact details. In the book we can find impressionism in the descriptions of nature. The world premiere took place at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 13, 2023, in the Special Presentations section. [9] [4] It was also invited at the 28th Busan International Film Festival in 'Flash Forward' section and was screened on 8 October 2023. [10] The Peasants chronicles the goings-on within Lipce over the course of a year, with each volume corresponding to a season. Indeed, we see that tsarist occupation has little effect on the day-to-day lives of Reymont’s characters whilst direct control over the unfortunates is wielded by wealthier peasants and the local Polish landowner, who at one point manages to channel away peasant anger by appealing to nationalist sentiment.

These scenes are extremely dynamic scenes, with the camera following the characters, and flying into the heart of the action. To make the first fully oil painting animated film ( Loving Vincent) we had to come up with a raft of cinematic and technical innovations, but The Peasants sets the bar much higher.”