THE MOVING PICTURE BOY ARCHIVE

CZARNE STOPY

 

Title: Czarne stopy
English translation of title: Black Feet
Year of Release: 1987
Director: Waldemar Podgórski
Principal Boy Actors: Marcin Kowalczyk (as Marek, the leader of his scout troop), Sasza Depczynski (Blyskawica), Bartosz Hajncz (Felek), Sebastian Iwanow (Maciek), Mikolaj Janic (Zenek), Slawomir Krajewski (Franek), and Janusz Pawlak (Jósek)
Genre: Adventure, drama
Country of Production: Poland
Length: I hr 37 min
Language: Polish
Availability: The film was released on DVD by Telewizji Kino Polska as part of a collection entitled Za Jeden Uśmiech ('For a Smile').
English subtitles: The DVD release included English subtitles. English subtitles are also available from opensubtitles.org

Synopsis
A group of seven boys forming a scout troop go to a scout camp in the Świętokrzyskie (Holy Cross) Mountains, where they give their troop the name "Black Feet", and have various adventures.

Source material
From the 1960 novel of the same name by Polish writer Seweryna Szmaglewska (1916-1992).

Director commentary
In 1987, at the time of the film's release, the following comments by director Waldemar Podgórski were published in Filmowy Serwis Prasowy [Film Press Service] No. 8:

For many years I had been thinking about filming scouting adventures. I used to be a scout and this movement has always fascinated me. In my day, the meetings looked different, there were different ways of gaining skills, different ways of spending time. But although in the past we played hide-and-seek, and today we have computer games, the meaning of the scouting movement, its educational values, have not changed and have not become outdated. I wanted to show in my film those enormous, underutilised and underappreciated educational possibilities of scouting. It is a well-known truth that schools overloaded with didactic programs no longer have time to educate young people.

The richness of content in Seweryna Szmaglewska's book created enormous possibilities, but also imposed certain limitations. The novel does not have a classic dramaturgy, the plot is actually a series of loosely connected episodes, the adventures of a scout troop. In order to create an approximation, I wove these adventures into a cause-and-effect sequence and tried to show how they affect the maturation and attitudes of the boys. I adopted the principle: each adventure is a new experience, a test of character. The culmination of the film is the scene of the scout initiation. I am aware that this is a culmination understood more in the emotional than dramatic sense. Nothing foreshadows it beforehand. The initiation of the "novices" is as much of a surprise to the film's rascals as it is to the viewer. The film, like the novel, has a mosaic structure, but in terms of atmosphere, I believe, it differs significantly from the literary original. I think I did not manage to fully translate into visual language the joy radiating from the book's pages and its specific sense of humour.

I have already come across the opinion that the film lacks attractions, that it has moments in which not much happens. It has been suggested that in order to liven up the action and allow my characters to experience exciting adventures, I could have introduced a spy, for example. However I quite consciously made something like a film about typical scouts. I know that "Black Feet" is perceived by them in this way. When scouts look at the characters in the film, they see themselves as they are. Everything is familiar to them: experiences, situations, customs, songs. Perhaps the adventures of the "Black Feet" troop seem ordinary, but I mainly wanted to depict the emotions associated with staying at a scout camp.
(Published in Filmowy Serwis Prasowy [Film Press Service] No. 8, 1987. Translation by the Editor)

Production and Publicity photos
The first three photos show Marcin Kowalczyk as Marek.
(Clicking on the images will open the full-size image in a new tab.)

   

Screenshots