Iga Lis describes the fish from the smokehouse in the northern Polish seaside town of Leba as the best she has ever tasted. “I am not saying this only as a way to advertise the business or the film,” Lis insists. All that grilled salmon, mackerel and halibut really does taste heavenly.
Her feature documentary The Queen And The Smokehouse, opening the Krakow Film Festival this weekend, profiles Miecia, the woman who runs the smokehouse that “makes your dreams come true from morning till night.” She has some magic ingredient, one even more strongly guarded than the recipe for Coca Cola and which she will never divulge. This gives the fish its extraordinary taste. (Her son-in-law is the only other person in the world who knows the formula – but he is sworn to secrecy).
As a kid, Lis used to make visits with her grandparents to the seaside near Leba. “It’s a place with a sentimental value to me…at a certain point I decided that I am interested in learning more about it, understanding how this unique place works.”
Like almost every other seaside resort, Leba has a double life. In the summer, it is heaving with visitors. For eight months of the year, though, everything slows down. This is a town designed more for tourists than for the benefit of the locals – and that creates its own tensions.
The director met Miecia while on a reconnaissance trip to the coast. “At first, to be completely honest, I didn’t find Leba particularly interesting or unique compared to the other towns, but my friend convinced me [to] give it one more shot, ‘let’s go for a walk.’ It was early in the morning, 8am on a Saturday, and the town was completely dead. But on some side street, I noticed a huge queue lined up outside a metal shed.”
And, yes, all the people were massing just after dawn to sample Miecia’s fish.
“Coming a bit closer, I noticed this woman with blonde hair smoking a cigarette,” remembers Lis. The first thing the director said to the Smokehouse owner was: “I am a filmmaker, I want to make a film about you. Miecia said ‘sure,’ and that was the first and last time we talked about it.”
This is a very closely focused observational documentary which captures the most intimate moments in its subject’s life, her hopes, fears and dreams.
“You often hear from documentary filmmakers that it is dangerous to become close to the people you make a film about, and that distance is very important…I heard those voices but I found it impossible not to form relationships with those people. At a certain point, I found myself caring deeply about them – and they cared deeply about me.”
The documentary was made over a period of three years. The first half was spent simply building a rapport with Miecia and her co-workers, sometimes not even filming.
The smokehouse boss is a formidable figure, kindly but with a temper. Her health is failing but she refuses to acknowledge the toll her work is having on her. “It’s a very intense job to work in high heat for very long hours. Miecia is the first person there. She starts her work at 4am and she works till 8pm. We wanted to give full respect to that.”
Miecia told the filmmakers that she’d prefer if they weren’t there when she was at her busiest, between 10pm and 3pm. This actually suited Lis. The lighting is “very bad” at the middle of the day. The crew would therefore start shooting early in the morning and would then come back at 5pm, for the late shift.
Scrape beneath the surface and you soon discover deeper problems. There is alcoholism. Marriages break up. Locals get involved in petty crime and end up in prison.
Miecia won’t touch alcohol. Her father was a drunkard and she is determined not to follow him. Visitors still think she might be a drinker. After all, she has swarthy skin and a raspy voice. This, though, is because of all the time she spends in the smokehouse and because of her cigarette habit. With her ferocious work ethic, she is too busy to drink.
“For me, she is representative of a post-war generation that has a completely different relationship to work. She defines her being through her output and her success,” the director notes.
Her son-in-law, likely to inherit the business, has a different perspective. He’ll put family first. If his daughter has a birthday, he won’t miss it.
Late in the film, when Miecia spends time at a sanatorium for her health, she doesn’t feel at all comfortable with her situation at all. She can’t bear to be away from the smokehouse, even when it is for her own good.
In the documentary, Lis is trying to analyse the relationship between the local people and the tourists. “Some would say that there are a lot of non-authentic businesses [to cater to tourist demand] and that Miecia represents the authentic business. But what I find real interesting in this symbiotic relationship is Miecia’s perspective,” the director reflects. “Miecia always told me: ‘listen, I will never complain about the tourists. I love tourists because they are what makes the smokehouse’s heartbeat. Without them, this business would be nothing.”
Still only 24, Lis is one of the wunderkinds of Polish cinema. She didn’t go to film school, instead studying history at the London School of Economics, but has already racked up some impressive credits including In My Day, a short doc featuring intimate real-life phone calls between grandmothers and their granddaughters which played at the London Short Film Festival. She has also made advertisements and music videos.
“I always loved film. I always watched films passionately but I didn’t really realise that it could be a career,” the director explains her circuitous route into the business.
She grew up in a media family. Her parents are prominent journalists. “But I think the media world is quite different from the documentary world as far as I observe because the media world is very focused on fast news, quick turnaround and a lot of information while documentary films are the exact opposite. It’s a very long process. It really takes a lot of time to be able to shoot a film about a human being.”
The Queen And The Smokehouse was produced by Munk Studio – Polish Filmmakers Association, co-produced by Silver Frame, Canal +, MX35 and co-financed by the Polish Film Institute. After the Krakow premiere, the aim is to begin the international festival roll-out in the autumn. The project was originally conceived as a short “but then we all decided there is enough story in there to have a feature length documentary film,” Lis ends.
