"Maska" is the latest animated film of Quay brothers, directors and puppet animators, with the music composed by Krzysztof Penderecki. The screenplay is the adaptation of Stanisław Lem’s novel of the same title. The action of “Maska” is set in a technologically developed but, at the same time, feudal world. Beautiful Duenna was created in order to carry out certain mission. However, she will be forced to choose between accomplishing the task she was created for and love.

“In the beginning there was darkness and cold flames and reverberating roar which induced torpidity, reverence and dread.” – it is an opening sentence of Lem’s powerful and moving story about a machine constructed and programmed to kill a man who dared to turn against the king. As its recognition grows, ‘she’ realizes her femininity, then identity, embracing three genealogies (a duenna, countess and orphan). She is in love with her prey, but has to chase and murder him. She is a bride and, at the same time, a butcher, torn between her affection and duty towards the king. She never knew whether she was capable of doing it, if her feelings were stronger than the way she was programmed. When she finally finds him he is dead. She embraces him and stays there. “It ceased to snow and like the bridal gown I never wore I now resembled my surroundings. I laid thus in the light and in the darkness through two days and two years of snow which covered our bed with a sheet that did not melt. And on the third day of the third year the sun came up”. In the film story is told both visually and by narration (voice-over by Magda Cielecka) - without a precedence in the Quays’ short films.

“It is a film unlike all the other films we have done which chart the visual journey rather than a verbal, literary one. This one really shapes the images into a story that you really have to follow, unrelenting the pace that is her journey and how she has solved or is trying to solve what is happening inside her. The lethal machine she is but also the emotional machine she could be. That’s something that I don’t think we looked in, because we made it a visual film first, then we kept notes where this text might possibly fit (Stephen)/float (Timothy), then we did our voice over and started to lay it in. As we laid it in we suddenly realized that every time we positioned it, it seemed to work , let the story evolve another step forward and then, at time, we said how eerie, it was really shaping. ..We got seduced by it so we followed that path”

“Penderecki’s music is something we grew up with, it is not a normal film music. For us it is like the environment of the film”.

Małgorzata Sady