Welcome to an exclusive interview with two creative visionaries, director Jacek Szymanski and renowned chef Maksut Askar, whose collaboration has birthed a breathtaking cinematic experience: ‚A Nature Odyssey’. This experimental short promises to be a sensory journey like no other, where art and culinary artistry intertwine to redefine the boundaries of visual storytelling. And I have to say, this promise has been more than fulfilled.
Agnieszka Celej: Experimentation with film style and storytelling can be quite challenging. What motivated you to take this creative risk, and how the idea of a film was born?
Jacek Szymański: The idea for a film was born from our conversations with Maksut. We were sitting in the NEOLOKAL restaurant, testing natural wines that were just about to be added to the menu… and we immediately hit the flow. Hahaha… You always need to create a good background for the chat.
Maksut Askar: Creativity carries risks for sure but if you are creative for yourself before the others, then there is no risk. We all knew what we wanted from the beginning, doing something good for ourselves. And sharing our inspirations with each other without the barriers of others. We just wanted to make a movie for ourselves.
Jacek Szymański: Maksut always says that Soil is the most important thing because everything in the cuisine comes from the earth. And that was the start! Concepts were fired one after the other. We love graphics, this aesthetic is close to us, and the Earth is nothing more than a circle. If you look at vegetables and fruits, see how many of them are round when cut? Isn’t it beautiful?
I love filming food, I have been doing it commercially with great passion for many years. Tabletop is nothing more than creating irrational situations: something explodes, something jumps, something collides… etc. After all, such situations do not happen in normal life, right? So I’m stretching the reality. And this is beautiful! I have always been inspired by top chefs, their philosophy of creating dishes, aesthetics and approach to food. Each chef has his own sensitivity, and during many conversations with them I came to the conclusion that they are normal food directors but without a camera. Just as my goal is to build a story in the form of a short film, theirs is to build a story on a plate. You will surprise the viewer only when you are consistent with your own sense of aesthetics, and in order to break yourself and your patterns, you have to experiment.
