“Peasants”. An amazing teaser of the film adaptation of Reymont’s novel. “It’s a real spectacle”

DK Welchman (previously known as Dorota Kobiela) and Hugh Welchman, the creators of “Loving Vincent” – the world’s first full-length painting animation, which was seen in cinemas by six million viewers – now present the fruits of several years of work on “Peasants”.

“Peasants” – see the teaser

“Peasants”, like “Loving Vincent”, are produced in the technique of painting animation, but they are supposed to differ from each other. DK Welchman explains:

The scale of the two films is incomparable. “Loving Vincent” is an intimate film with a lot of static shots and dialogues. “The Boys” is a real spectacle. In the film we have impressive dance scenes, battles. These are incredibly dynamic shots, the camera often follows the hero, a lot is happening in the frame. Working on two films, of course, brought challenges, with Loving Vincent we created many original solutions, but Peasants sets the bar much higher.

100 painters worked for over 200,000 hours

Even in 2020, the creators said that their “Peasants” would be inspired by the art of Young Poland, and . Therefore, interpretations of works by such artists as Józef Chełmoński, Ferdynand Ruszczyc and Leon Wyczółkowski will appear on the big screen.

In the beginning, a movie with actors was made. The cast of The Peasants includes: Mirosław Baka, Ewa Kasprzyk, Andrzej Konopka, Sonia Bohosiewicz, Ma³gorzata Kożuchowska, Robert Gulaczyk, Maciej Musiał, Dorota Stalińska, Julia Wieniawa. The main role – Jagna – is played by Kamila Urzędowska. – It was important for us that the role of Jagna was played not only by “the most beautiful girl in all of Lipce”, but also that she should have a mixture of girlish carefreeness, sex appeal and aggressiveness. And this is what we saw in Kamila Urzędowska – Sean Bobbitt, the producer of the film, explains the choice of the actress.

Then over 100 painters in four studios in Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and Serbia painted oil paintings on canvas, which became keyframes in the film. About 80,000 paintings had to be created, the artists have devoted more than 200,000 hours of work so far. The animators supplemented the shots painted by the painters to make the whole film smooth and pleasing to the eye. It was hard but satisfying work. Due to the huge amount of work, as well as the pandemic, the premiere of the film, planned for 2022, has been postponed to October 13 this year.

The picture is enriched by music related to Polish rituals interpreted by Łukasz LUC Rostkowski. — Just as Reymont in “Chłopy” uses a simple peasant language and plays with it virtuoso, creating beautiful and rich braids of words, so we would like to use simple folk instruments to create beautiful and rich compositions referring to Polish roots music, but above all to the specific literary form of this novel – said LUC in an interview with Gazeta.pl.