Films, factories and men in bowler hats. Gavin Thomas plunges into the weird and wonderful world of Lodz.
The first problem with Lodz is the name. To those unfamiliar with the finer nuances of the Polish language, the spelling is not so much unhelpful as provocatively misleading. Say "Lodz", "Luds", or anything remotely similar, and you'll get nothing but the blankest of stares. The actual pronunciation is something like Woodge - the kind of woooo-ing sound you might make whilst falling over after a few too many glasses of the city's deceptively potent Lodzkie Mocne pilsner. Lodz, one quickly realizes, is a slippery, surprising and frequently surreal sort of place, one in which nothing is quite what it seems, least of all its name.
Which perhaps explains how, on my first morning in Lodz, I found myself on the topmost floor of an abandoned factory on the outskirts of the city, perched high up amidst a tangled bird's nest of rattling metal catwalks and staircases. As I watched, a black-suited man in a bowler hat and a girl with an oversized red suitcase wandered enigmatically amongst piles of coal dust and scraps of rusted metal, surrounded by the festering remains of stalled machinery - a compellingly surreal vision of Soviet-era industrial verismo cum Magritte-inspired dreamworld. And before you accuse me of having had one-too-many glasses of Lodzkie Mocne pilsner myself, let me explain.
The factory was one of the locations for a new film, Zuzanna, being shot in the city by students Daria Kopiec and Monika Kotecka as part of their final-year diploma project. Daria and Monika are two of the aspiring cineastes studying at Lodz's world-famous film school, whose stellar array of former students reads like a virtual Who's Who of Polish cinema, including Roman Polanski and Krzysztof Kieslowski (of Three Colours and The Double Life of Veronique fame). More recently, Lodz's crumblingly atmospheric industrial landscapes have attracted the attention of David Lynch, who shot large parts of his latest film, Inland Empire, in the city. No surprise then that the city is often referred to as Poland's Hollywood - or, to be perfectly precise, Hollywoodge.
Hence the factory, the film, and the bowler-hatted spook. Lodz's dramatic industrial landscapes have always loomed large in the imagination of the film-makers who have worked here. As Krzysztof Kieslowski himself once put it, recalling his own student days in Lodz: "The whole world around was very sad. It was not even black and white, it was just black, or maybe gray. Lodz is photogenic because it is dirty and crappy. The whole city is like that. In a certain way, the whole world is like that. And people's faces are like city walls: sad, full of a drama in their eyes."
"I grew up here," says Zuzanna's producer, Agnieszka Wasiak, "and I've always been in love with these beautiful old buildings. We spent two months scouting around for locations for the film and discovered the most amazing sights. People from other parts of Poland think that Lodz is just grey and depressing, but you've got to say they don't really understand the place at all."
"It's true," adds Zuzanna's director of photographer and co-creator Monika Kotecka. "My own first impressions of Lodz weren't good. It just looked gloomy and dirty. But later on I started looking for my own map of the city. Gradually I came to realize that Lodz is a very magical kind of place. There's something wild about it, something dramatic. It's a unique city, for sure, the people are very special, and the atmosphere is completely strange."
"Exactly," says Agnieszka. "Only in Lodz could men fly around an old cotton mill in bowler hats . . ."
The new face of Lodz can be seen most clearly along the magnificent Piotrkowska Street, touted as the longest shopping street in Europe, which cuts arrow-straight through the heart of the city for almost 5km, lined by an eye-catching array of flamboyantly decorated mansions which have earned the city a further soubriquet as the so-called "Vienna of the East".
It's along Piotrkowska that you get the sense of what Lodz is swiftly becoming, and which puts the stereotypical image of the city as a place of grime and crime firmly in its place. Lodz's reputation as one of Poland's most culturally progressive cities is being steadily re-affirmed. The beautiful old mansions are slowly being restored and turned into bookshops, galleries and cafes catering to the city's enormous student population, who give the whole place a vibrantly youthful air, as well as providing steady custom for the hundred-odd bars which line the street (membership of the elite One Hundred Club awaits those who suceed in supping in each and every one - though not, presumably, on the same night).
And now, one suspects, is the time to visit: while the old factories survive in all their crumbling glory, and before the city is discovered by tour groups and the bars of Piotrkowska are overrun by stag parties. For the time being, Lodz provides a fascinating study in contrasts. Old men in grey suits and flat caps play chess in parks and trams clatter past towering Soviet-era concrete apartment blocks, while around the corner crowds of students sit in chi-chi modern cafes sipping frappucinos and practising their English to a soundtrack of Beyonce and Blur. At one end of the street it's 2008, and at the other it's still 1975. Confused? Well, yes, so was I, and yet this is all part of the wonder of Woodge: that for a lot of the time you don't quite know where you are. Or when you are either, for that matter.
Meanwhile, back at the Textile Museum, the next Zuzanna shoot is already in progress. The lights are casting eerie purple shadows onto the dusky walls of the looming factory buildings, while five bowler-hatted actors are performing a bizarrely choreographed sequence which looks like an attempt to recreate Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks sketch at the end of a long night on the tiles. We watch this final slice of quintessentially Woodge-like weirdness for half an hour then head off, feeling slightly surreal ourselves, for a final night in the bars of Piotrkowska.
And make mine a pint of Lodzkie Mocjne, please. Woooo....
First published in Ryanair Magazine (June/July 2008)
You can read a shortened online version of the article here.