Filmmaker Monika K Adler: “We can create a more valuable life if we work to expand our consciousness”

Development of our own consciousness is the only way for humanity to progress. We invest much of our resources in new technologies and the only advance we have is one: production of objects. Devoured by consumerism and degraded to the level of ‘ego,’ we’ve lost contact with our souls. By working to expand our consciousness, we can create a more valuable life.

As a part of my series about the rising stars in popular culture, I had the pleasure of interviewing Monika K. Adler. Monika is a Polish film director and photographer, based in London. Her work has shown worldwide; in over a hundred film festivals, museums and commercial galleries. She’s now working on her debut feature film Sick Bacchus; which tells a story of the existential slavery of hyper-capitalism, set in the heart of London’s wealthy elite.

Thank you so much for joining us Monika! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

History and dreams brought me to filmmaking. I come from Poland, which has a difficult history of war, occupation and division; this left a terrible mark on the subconscious of many generations. When my grandfather Marian returned from a concentration camp in Germany, he became a movie-projectionist in a cinema called “Dawn” in a small town in Mazovia. Together with his wife and children, they built their lives around the cinema to forget the trauma of war. I suckled my love of film from my mother’s milk. The smell of celluloid and the image of the audience hypnotised by the stream of light from the projector, along with their own emotions, filled my imagination.

Film was an invitation to a better world, signposted by the colourful neon sign on the grey communist facade of the cinema in Gostynin, my hometown. Later, I attended the many morning screenings of ‘auteur cinema’ shown at the Muranów cinema, Warsaw; and as a result, I rarely got to school. At 13 years, I started to create my own images; first drawing and painting…