Kinga Michalska
Canada | 2023 | 36 min
World premiere
Languages : English, Polish
Subtitles : French, English
In the 1960s, an anthropologist thinks he has discovered the existence of a vampire woman in a Kashub community in Wilno, Ontario. Kinga Michalska returns to the village still recovering from the trauma of this coverage, using a skilful blend of archival footage and performance to question the relationship between lived reality and scientific "truth".
In 2021, Kinga Michalska arrives in the oldest Kashubian community in Wilno, Ontario. When they reveal to the former mayor that they are interested in a female vampire that is said to have lived there, he threatens to hang them... Indeed, the filmmaker is not the first person to take an interest in this legend. Dozens of tourists before them have visited this “mini-Transylvania”, whose reputation was forged by Jan Perkowski, an anthropologist who visited the town in the 1960s in order to carry out a linguistic study. His work became particularly popular when he claimed, on the radio, that he had met a mature woman in Wilno who was "missing both her upper incisors". Michalska has unearthed the researcher's original recordings, which they restage through playful performances to denounce their spectacular fetishisation. Playing with imagery inspired by the horror genre, Vampires, it's Nothing to Laugh at considers how a scientific enquiry can transform into a fantastical story, hiding behind the seductive mask of verisimilitude.
Emmanuel Chicon
