Despite the jingles, sparkles, and the prospect of stuffing oneself with cake and being showered with presents, December is not necessarily as bouncy as the stuff played continuously on radio stations. For many of us it also means stress, time worries, financial worries, complicated-family-situation worries, first-Christmas-without-so-and-so worries, another-Christmas-as-a-single-gal worries and many others sources of anxiety. For me, it’s the cold — indoors…

Sexy Laundry (2015) by Izabela Plucińska Between the Valentine’s Day – originally a Western Christian liturgical feast, now an excuse to spend our hard-earned money on red roses and heart-shaped chocolates ($19.7 billion in the US last year) – and the Women’s Day (originally International Working Women’s Day, celebrated since 1909), I decided to write about women, love and relationships….

As soon as November comes, with its gloominess and cold, my (already big) appetite for all things dark and morbid grows even bigger. To be fair, as someone who blossoms in light and warmth, I do actually find it hard not to succumb to misery when days get significantly shorter and darker, but I try to make the most of…

Despite an enormous interest in music from my early childhood, I didn’t grow up watching music videos. At home we had neither MTV nor any other music channel, so it was only when I was visiting friends that I could watch videos accompanying songs I was listening to. With the arrival of YouTube, I finally had a chance to fill the gaps…

Women artist don’t enjoy the kind of spotlight men often get. Kira Cochrane from the Guardian wrote 3 years ago: How many female artists featured in the top 100 auction sales, ranked by price, last year? Gemma Rolls-Bentley, an independent curator, decided to find out. One day, not long ago, she sat down with the 2012 list, “and spent a…

There’s a term I’ve always liked: cross-genre, and I’ve often used it to describe my own work. Just as I avoid pigeonhole-ing things in life, I’m attracted to works that escape genre classifications and narrow paths. I find that it’s at these intersections of styles and forms that true magic can be born. Once-upon-a-time a complete theatre-addict, these days you…

My life has recently been revolving around animation, as I’ve been working on a little animated intro for my website and finishing an old project, which is an animated music clip to Fly on the Windscreen by Depeche Mode. The latter involved getting deep into expressions, which, as every After Effects adept knows, is not an easy territory. But after…

I admit that I have a soft spot for trailers and cinematic adverts. The challenge to tell a story (of a film, book, exhibition, or a product) in a highly condensed fashion to intrigue the audience and make them emotionally engaged, is a fascinating one. A recent search for a new fragrance became an excuse to research and watch several…

In the time of emotional turbulences in my life, I tend to become a bit of a film addict. I often turn to my favourite directors and re-watch old movies. Recently, it was Woody Allen, who I have been a fan of ever since I was old enough to watch “adult” films. The two films I chose to re-watch, You…

What inspired me to write this post are two seemingly unrelated things I saw recently: a friend’s website and a documentary film. The website was created using Adobe Muse. The documentary film was about sign painters, released through the Creative Bundle. These two completely different discoveries both led me to ask the same question: a question about the role of…

Last Friday I went to the Kinoteka Closing Night Gala at the Union Chapel to see one of my favourite nu-jazz duos, Skalpel, who were reinterpreting the music of Witold Lutosławski and Andrzej Panufnik, two major names in Polish contemporary classical music. The concert was magical, and the venue’s unique character only enhanced the beauty of the music. But Skalpel’s…

A few days ago I watched a film which affected me in a way only a handful of films did (recent ones include Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, Lukas Moodysson’s Lilja 4-ever or Jan Komasa’s Suicide Room). From Inside is an animated movie created by John Bergin (credited as writer, producer, director, and animator), based on his graphic novel about a young…