Dear friends,

I'm a costume historian and theatre's costume designer. For the last two years I’ve been pursuing my greatest dream - to create a costume film. It is my master’s thesis at the Academy of Fine Art in Warsaw, Poland. The short film will be inspired by Antoine Watteau's painting "Embarkation for Cythera" from 1717.

"Embarkation for Cythera", Antoine Watteau

I've been under strong influence of baroque and early rococo art for over 10 years. My movie will be a culmination of my whole creative and scientific work.I believe that the film will be the real treat for all enthusiasts of artistic movies and historical fashion.

The movie will be a short impression without dialogues – a sentimental story about motive of passing away in baroque culture, called Vanitas.

After the death of king Louis XIV, when the aristocratic culture has nearly ended, there was a subtle moment of reflection and premonition among the people in the midst of rococo period. Antoine Watteau has caught that specific atmosphere on his painting - the moment, when the music stopped and the elegant company had a deep reflection about the end of an epoch. This will be the lead motive of my short film.

It's me working on the movie costume

The action starts in a park, during sunrise in the dark of early autumn, when first subtle signs of forthcoming death of nature can be seen. Music stops and the baroque musicians, who played it all night, are starting to walk away.

Next scene involves elegant aristocratic ladies standing in the water, in a pond between black marble obelisks - the symbols of a tomb. Ladies are tired and sorrowful, but still very distinguished. They are strongly convinced of the immortality of their civilization, but also feel the forthcoming triumph of death. The ladies plan to leave this place. Although they wait for other women, who also want to do it but are late, no one’s in a hurry.

Selected costume designs for the film:

They miss the world that is passing away, and they’re leaving it very slowly. All of their gestures are still aristocratic and perfect, like they still were in the golden age of nobility. Their costumes are artistic and ornate, but they waste them in the dirty pond with mud – this is the symbolic vision of the vanitas idea and their actual situation in the history. The silks, embroideries, pearls and laces are declined like the nature in the autumn, and the aristocracy of the baroque period. All of the movie scenes will be connected with this motive.

I'm the director, the scriptwriter, costume designer, scenography designer, the producer, and the tailor. Many friends are helping me as DOPs, musicians, composers, editors, actors, or by serving other functions. You can see the current effects of my work on the photos.

All the costumes are made of silk, embroidered and decorated with natural pearls and corals by me. The patterns that i painted on the silks are influenced by the late baroque.

The embroidered stomacher: design and the finished work

Embroidered stomacher with natural pearls

Since two years I invest all of my efforts and time for this project, but now I’m out of funds and I’m afraid that my movie will not come true. I have all of the necessary things, except the 850 EUR for the realisation of scenography – especially obelisks, which I mentioned in the description above.

The obelisks are very important element of the scenery – their symbolism is necessary to the make the full artistic significance. It's a very important part of scenography. It performs a fundamental role at the "stage", since the black marble gives it a forbidding and distinguished character, while being an image of current condition of the characters.

Concept art of the first scene with obelisks

It's a very important part of scenography. It performs a fundamental role at the "stage", since the black marble gives it a forbidding and distinguished character, while being an image of current condition of the characters.

The composition of the film's image: obelisks with actress wearing high lace's bonnets, will create great rythmic composition of vertical shapes. It suggests that the obelisks have something in common with the ladiess, it's realy intersting esspecially when we know, that the obelisks were very often used as a tomb monument in baroque. I intend to make one special sequence of animation with the ladies and the obelisks. In this scene, Ladies will stand still in precise poses, when all other things will change around them: The water and the trees will be moving quickly, the sun will rise, and the obelisks will move at a slow pace.

For me it's a symbol of immortality of aristocratic ideas and culture, and a symbol of the fact that noble people were excluded from epoch's influence. It's a dramatic image of the times, when all of those sublime ideas were so close to its unexpected end.

I hope that we can make it together. Thank you so much for all your kind support!