A local community of bridge players meets regularly in one of Wrocław Institute of Culture – Klub pod Kolumnami in Nadodrze District (Wrocław) starting from last year, when the new location opened. They collaborated with Magic Carpets residents – Marcin Dominiak and Maciej Kowalczyk – this summer in Wrocław and shared their stories about how they started playing bridge. Together with artists they created an experimental movie about the community.
“Magic Carpets” project: Gameplay
Through regular meetings with the bridge players, the artists were learning the rules while the seniors took on acting roles and became the characters of the film Rozgrywka (“Gameplay”). In the movie, which is based on interviews with the participants, the bridge community shares their memories. For many, bridge is a return to old passion from their high school or university days. As the project participants said, taking part in the film production had been such an extraordinary challenge that it became an engaging and intriguing step away from their daily activities. It allowed community from outside of the film or even art circles to get involved in the production. It is worth mentioning that never before have any artists tried telling the story about this interest group, and it is even more surprising considering how popular bridge in our grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ generations used to be. “Just like the years after the war could be called ‘the jazz era,’ the same way the interwar years could be called ‘the bridge era’,” says Private Life of the Elites of the Second Polish Republic. “Bridge was played by everyone everywhere. Women and men, civil and military personnel, rich and poor.”
Thanks to the artists’ interdisciplinary approach, which combined acting and film, the mathematical rules of bridge were juxtaposed with magical, almost surreal, card narration. As a result, we got a story of artists who become rookie players and of bridge players who become rookie actors.
Number of community members included in the project: 20
Reasons for participating in the “Magic Carpets” project: Bridge players wanted to make the exchange of knowledge between artists and their community. It was a daily fun activity they could participate in and the result was a movie. The community chose this medium to tell their story.