Aleš Urbanczik

I am not a film director and 'Finding the Line – An Exploration of Structural Integration' is my first documentary movie.

So I would much rather spend the space I have for an interview to talk about the movie than about myself. Nowadays the term 'fascia' is nearly a 'household' name. In fitness studios people work on their fascia, massage therapists massage it, yoga practitioners stretch it and scientists are researching its properties.

Our movie is about the woman who already pointed to the importance of fascia more than 50 years ago, at a time where, practically everyone, except a tiny circle of people, considered fascia to be some sort of inert filling material in the human body.

This woman was Ida Rolf.

Many people nowadays talk about fascia – very few people know or talk about Ida Rolf.

She founded an approach of working with fascia she called Structural Integration.

Many of the things she claimed at the time 'on the basis of observation' are being validated by contemporary scientific research.

As an instructor of Structural Integration I am amazed how much students change during their 2 year training, how much they slowly become themselves, how the changes in their bodies and a different awareness influences their psychology in the best possible way.

 I wanted to document this change, let the students speak for themselves and at the same time allow the viewer to get to know Ida Rolf and her quest to explore the relationship between gravity and mankind.

'Finding the Line – An Exploration of Structural Integration' documents stages of Basic Trainings in Prague, Warszawa and Milano. I am excited to have it shown in the city I was born and a city which I visit once a month to teach. Yes – Covid was a distraction, it took 18 months longer to finish the trainings and the movie... but, he... that's life...if this is the worst thing that happens this century we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

We learned a lot during this work, how to do things but also how not to do things – I guess a typical 'first time director'.

There will be a sequel. This time about Ida Rolf's life, honoring and celebrating a woman who at her time had by dint of her own efforts, unaided (indeed, undermined rather than aided), promulgated, propagandized, demonstrated, taught, persuaded, organized - irreversibly brought into the world a thing of great importance. And she did it all without money, without support, while rearing her children and living her life.

If I were to say something about myself...I was born in Prague in 1958. The first ten years of my life I spent in Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic. In 1968, on holiday in the UK, my family was surprised by the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops, and decided to seek refugee status in the UK. My mother's profession as a pediatrician led us to Switzerland 2 years later, where I went to school. After finishing High School I was accepted at the Acting Academy in Zurich, and having completed that, I spent 7 years on stage in German and Swiss theatres. The role I became best known for was Puck in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream.

During my acting time I encountered Structural Integration. The physical experience was so powerful, that I decided to change professions and devote my life to exploring and later teaching the basic principles of Ida Rolf's work.

Overview: Boulder Colorado and Esalen Institute USA 1960's & 1970’s: Resulting from her studies Dr. Ida Rolf developed a program of postural re-patterning using fascial manipulation and movement education which she called Structural Integration and which is nowadays known in the public at large as ‘rolfing’. Milano, Prague, Warszaw 2018 - 2022 This movie tells the story of an adventure - an adventure that will take the viewer into Ida Rolf's world of Structural Integration. At the heart of the movie are 8 students and their quest to understand Ida Rolf's philosophy during their 3 year Basic Trainings in Milano, Prague and Warsaw. The movie also explains the basic ideas behind Structural Integration and discusses the most recent research into fascia.

Learn more about the film here.