Animation for Museum of Jewish History "POLIN"

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This is a visual development project for a documentary film by Museum of the History of Polish Jews "Polin".

It's telling a story of Warsaw's district Muranów, that used to be a ghetto during WWII. Being a pre-war center of Jewish culture, after the war it has become just a vast field of 3 meters tall ruins. To understand the scale of destruction, the modern district Muranów has been built right on the remains of former ghetto, because taking away all dust would have had taken 10 years.

Film's main narration (live action) is pierced through with a series of emotional animated flashbacks, which illustrate the story of the main character's grand-grandmother. She and her family has had to endure the horrors of life in the ghetto in Muranów, surviving almost by a mere will of chance.

The film's point was to tell the touching and dramatic story of this place to young generation of people from both historical and emotional perspective.

VIDEO FRAGMENTS

The final result of our work was a series of video illustrations to the narrator, that later were added to the film.

STYLE

During visual development we worked closely with the museum workers for all historical details to be accurate. We made a big research with a variety of different photos from the time period, that were used as a base for backgrounds and character's appearance.

The main audience of the final film are teenagers. For me in was important to keep the visual style it appealing to them, but not infantile. I wanted to keep it both youthful, serious and fresh. I decided to use grainy textured brushes and overall high contrasts, mimicking the look of photographs from 30's and 40's.

(first concept drawing of the family)

STORYBOARDS

1. Grand-grand parents of main character first arrive in Muranów, which is a big city.

2. First cases of vandalism and antisemitism.

3. Family succeeds to leave the ghetto, yet have to hide in a tiny room to survive.

4. Once, the childen were at home, someone knocked and said they have to leave the room.

5. Even long after the war, the antisemitism wasn't over. Now a grown up grand-mother of main charater is sent away from work, now she has to hide in the mountains to be safe.

6. Muranów, which used to be a district filled with people, shops and laughter became only dust. Nowadays, in modern Warsaw, this district is 2 meters higher, then the other parts of it, because it was easier to build over the ruins, then cleaning up after the destruction.