There is some truth in every legend and every story ever told. Inspiration doesn't pop up just like that but is triggered by something observed, noticed among events, gestures, and emotions. By being beaten by an animal you can contract various diseases, rabes included, which we have feared and experienced from time immemorial. But can you, due to one bite, contract an entirely different state of being? Who is responsible for the deaths of innocent people around you? Can you trust your closest friends and relatives? Can a mental disease be the basis of something else, possibly a memory which you wanted to get rid of and push to the box of long-forgotten? Can you, finally, put faith in yourself, especially when you notice the first symptoms? Can you stay away from The Wolfman? Enjoy.
None of us is immune to the power of imagination. We all fell for stories: those told by our parents when we fell asleep, those told by our teachers which inspired us, those stories of success that made us finish this or that course and choose life vocation. We are puppets in someone's plot, a part of the bigger whole. Stories also help us, make us believe in a better future, better times, and better political systems. They restore our belief in humanity and faith that good will ultimately defeat the evil. They help overcome traumas. Sometimes the gift of imagination makes daily life bearable and allows to pick up the pieces. An extraordinary and real story of survival and psychological struggle, and a gift of a story-telling closed in beautiful-girls-filled, Nazi-occupied and reality-inspired little imaginary Belgian town. Welcome to Marwen.
Sometimes you are so focused on the problems that you forget about a bigger world. There are issues impossible to overcome for many of us but only yours seem so complex and depressing. Don't you appreciate what you have only by seeing that some don't have even half of your possessions? Don't you feel weirdly ashamed that you're fed and have a roof over your head when seeing homeless and hungry? Don't these shifts of attention put your life into perspective and make you learn your lessons?
What if the biggest hypochondriac met a girl who was about to die? Will coming up with a bucket list teach him how to catch the day and live life to the fullest? Can we by accident find our life's best friend and change our outlook on life? A lesson on how to appreciate what is around and make dreams a reality, as nothing is impossible. An art of saying goodbye, humbly taking what's before us and letting go. Then Came You.
The order of things is simple, we are born, occasionally to give birth to others. This order, however, doesn't respect individual cases, the gaps of maturity, the relationships we are in or out and giggles of fate. It might happen that your own mother is as immature as a spoilt teenager and requires your constant attention. It could be that this reckless parent gets pregnant just as soon as you start to grow your own family. In times when the age of the pregnancy is not really certain, exposing us to teenage mums and late mothers, it's fun to see two generations striving for the same: parenthood. For mothers and daughters, to appreciate the fleeting moments when we can still be together and share experiences. Enjoy.
Open the photo album with old pictures from your childhood. Look at your chocolate-smeared face, your awkward glance or beaming smile. Look through your teenage years. Pass kindergarten and primary school. Then cover your teenage years. See how your parents have changed, how time didn't wait for anyone to catch up or save the last glimpses of youth and beauty. See how from the bubbling infant you shifted into a grown person and how much effort it took, how much time, space.
We discovered camera to catch moments and preserve memories in time, we created movies to make our legends and stories infinite, to spread the adaptation of the written word, to close happiness and pain in the jar of indestructible. Some pushed this possibility to another level. Imagine a film which leads you through the whole process of upbringing, allows you to see children grow, people age and change, circumstances shift, political systems and pop-culture obsessions turn around and take over. Imagine that it can be seen just like an old photo album, picture by picture, years after years. Boyhood. Maybe it's also your life preserved within the frames of a film. Enjoy.
In no relationship, you have the naive guarantee that it will last forever. You may wish that one-time fascination will lead to long-lasting happiness, but it is rarely so, taking into account the rate of divorces. You might swallow the bitter pill of realization that your devotion to your husband doesn't make sense and your efforts to make him satisfied are simply futile. He's the one who cheats on you, you know it, you feel less attractive and not desired at all. Will finding an attractive young woman and hatching a plan of his seduction save your marriage, be its biggest downfall, or wake up the long-forgotten eroticism? Or maybe you will fall into your own carefully planned trap? Chloe.
We, humans, are capable of various evils. We have shown over the centuries that hatred, mass-murders, being blinded by religion or philosophy are no strangers to us and form our everyday bread and butter. While being ashamed, we have to admit: we might be the most developed, but we tend to be the cruelest kind of all. But are we the only species inhabiting our planet, living among us, door to door, body to body, usurping our habits and customs? Or maybe some myths and legends are still here because there's no smoke without fire and they contain a substantial pinch of truth? What is the border between the two worlds, the world of humans, and the world or trolls? And looking at our worst crimes, can we tell for sure that we are in fact more human than those we consider the inferior sub-creatures? Food for thought, Border.