WATCH: Marta Pajek On Making The Short Film Trilogy ‘Impossible Figures’
Polish filmmaker Marta Pajek is currently two-thirds of the way through her captivating and complex short film trilogy Impossible Figures and Other Stories, a series of disorienting semi-abstract shorts that use the motif of impossible figures as a metaphor for exploring situations that happen in different spaces: the space between two people, inside of a home, and throughout a city.
The first two shorts — released in 2016 and 2018 and produced by Animoon — have been major hits on the festival circuit, racking up numerous awards, including a number of grand prizes. Impossible Figures and Other Stories II won the grand prize at Stuttgart and GLAS in 2017, as well as best Polish fillm at the Animator Film Festival in Poland, while the second entry, Impossible Figures and Other Stories III, was selected for competition at Cannes last year, and won best animated film at the Krakow Film Festival, jury grand prize and audience awards at Animateka, and the top prize at the 2019 edition of Tricky Women.
A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, where she studied under filmmaker Jerzy Kucia, Pajek subsequently participated in a traineeship under the tutorship of Priit Pärn at the Turku Arts Academy in Finland. Her first professional film to achieve notice on the festival circuit was Sleepincord in 2011.
Pajek is currently in production on the third short in the Impossible Figures series, as well as developing a feature-length project.
She spoke with Cartoon Brew last June at the Annecy animation festival in France about the concept for the film series, how she plans her stories, and the important role that music plays in her films.
