Orbitalna (2014)

Overview

In the first shot, the place depicted by Marcin Malaszczak looks like a space station on a foreign planet. The camera approaches it from above, identifying only a few islands of light in a sea of darkness. Outside the film, it is - one can assume - part of a quarry: a conveyor belt on which earth and rocks are transported. There is a machine that runs the conveyor belt and a woman with tinted glasses who seems to be in control of the process. The film makes this handful of elements absolute: the conveyor belt, the machine, the woman and the dusty, deserted and unreal seeming horizon. The machine is not a functional tool in a process based on the division of labour, but the world’s motor. Without it, the conveyor belt, and thus the film’s conveyor belt, i.e. the entire world, would come to a standstill. The woman is, therefore, not a wage-earning employee, but the spirit of film and the world.

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