Agnieszka:

The morning after the screening in Warsaw, Agnieszka arrived at Ujazdowski Castle on her bicycle, bearing a gift of Polish apples. And somehow these apples were a nearly perfect incarnation of her fresh energy and rosy enthusiasm. A freelance journalist and aspiring writer, Agnieszka was ostensibly interviewing me for a potential article. But over the next two hours, as we talked over coffee in the remarkable warmth of the September sunshine, I discovered a kindred spirt...my Slavic sibling.

Agnieszka was clearly seduced by the nomadic freedom of the trainhopping lifestyle, and she openly admitted to falling in love with Lee. While CATCHING OUT presented a vision of America that she had never seen, her questions revealed an instinctive understanding of my reasons for making the film. She wanted to know whether I consider trainhopping to be a uniquely American experience, and she asked if I intended CATCHING OUT to be a political film. I soon recognized that her curiosity reflected the creative empathy of a struggling artist.

We discussed the global implications of corporate consumerism, and Agnieszka explained that most people in Poland have adopted the Western capitalist model without questioning. She believes that fear is fueling this impulse to catch up and not be left behind...and we all know that sex may sell, but fear is a more reliable motivator. Agnieszka also expressed her desire to connect to her Polish identity as a writer and storyteller. Her next project is a book about her parents: her mother a Polish Jew and her father a Lithuanian immigrant old enough to remember WWII.

Later in the afternoon Mike and I wandered from Ujazdowski Castle down the "Royal Route" of embassies, churches, and palaces to the Old Town. We admired the colorful plaster facades of noble buildings orderly assembled along the narrow streets, but a gritty photograph showing the skeletal remains of the central square after liberation served as a chilling reminder of the vicious appetite of the War.

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