I'm Still Alive   SP-2012 

She’s alive, but won’t be for long. Soon a host of angels will fetch her. Poetic portrait of a Polish woman called Jadwiga, who is old, poor and has lived in many countries, including the Netherlands, but has now returned to Warsaw. The filmmaker follows her closely.

A poetic and visual portrait of the old Polish woman Jadwiga Kubis Waslicka. Her life coincided with the 20th century. The great movements of history, such as communism, capitalism and fascism, meant she had to roam Europe from Poland via Germany and the United Kingdom to Holland. Now she’s back in her homeland, in Warsaw. She is old. Her body is decaying and she’s basically waiting until the angels come to fetch her.
The filmmaker is aware of Jadwiga's old age and approaching demise, but he also sees much beauty in her appearance. He juxtaposes her wrinkled face with the guilty Polish landscape. At the most intimate of moments, he does not look away and continues to seek beauty in fragility. The woman no longer leaves her house, but the filmmaker does. He brings images and sounds back that tell us things about her life, but without words. Images that mix the suffering from the past with the suffering now.

Programmer Note by Gertjan Zuilhof:

A documentary portrait of an old woman. Not an ordinary portrait and not an ordinary woman. Not that the woman is exceptional, or famous, or a relative of the filmmaker. She is special the way ordinary people can be special and can look at life in a special way. The filmmaker follows the old and frail woman close up, but regularly also takes a step backwards. He literally moves away by editing some shots of landscapes and cloudy skies (sometimes even filmed looking down from the clouds) between the shots of the woman's small cluttered dwelling.
A woman in decline. A woman facing an approaching end, but she doesn’t complain. She doesn’t want the end to come more quickly, she wants to persevere. Stooping, looking like a hoop, she shuffles around her room. Changing her clothes (yes, the filmmaker stays there all the time) is a real battle.
In the film, all kinds of video shots are used, from black-and-white to supernaturally coloured, but experimental shots do not dominate. It feels like a homage to a woman whom no-one knew, just before she went to heaven.