Solaris Mon Amour

An extraordinary found footage documentary inspired by Stanisław Lem’s “Solaris”. A trance-like, personal story about loss, mourning & memory. The film consists of excerpts from 70 films produced by the Educational Film Studio in Lodz in the 1960s and the first radio adaptations of “Solaris”. Lem begins writing “Solaris” the same year that Resnais’ “Hiroshima Mon Amour” is released – says Kuba Mikurda – Like Resnais’ film, I find “Solaris” a fascinating study of post-traumatic memory – repressed memories that pave their way into consciousness and demand to be expressed.

«All materials have been cut from their original context and stripped of their original function, which was primarily to illustrate short lectures on medicine, biology, technology, cosmology, etc. In “Solaris Mon Amour” they were used to build a visual narrative based on Stanislaw Lem’s novel. We mainly looked for close-ups and abstract shots, so that the shots did not contain too much knowledge of the original context. We also tried not to use facial shots (except for the last part of the film), so that the viewer would not identify with the characters on the screen and more with the character’s voiceover. We made the planet Solaris primarily from microscope shots – bacteria, protozoa, tissues, etc.»

— Kuba Mikurda