Event

"Two Lessons" (U.S. Theatrical Premiere presented by Documentary in Bloom)

Documentary in Bloom Presents Two Lessons
Curated by Livia Bloom

U.S. Theatrical Premiere
Wojciech Staron, 1998-2013, Poland, 114 mins.

In 1996, Wojciech Staron documented Malgosia, his
girlfriend, as she traveled the Siberian city
Usolie-Sibirskoe and gave Polish language lessons to
the descendants of exiled Poles. Captured on
beautiful 16mm film, Siberian Lesson is the candid
diary of a young teacher acclimating and falling in
love, as well as a portrait of a community still
reeling from the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Many years after their Siberian journey, now a
married couple with two children, Wojciech and
Malgosia traveled to a very different place: Azara, a
remote village in northern Argentina, where Malgosia
once again taught Polish to fellow emigrants. In the
gorgeous, startlingly intimate Argentinian Lesson,
Wojciech also turns his 16mm camera on Janek, his 8-
year-old son, and his friend Marcia, a bright
Argentinian girl of Polish descent bravely contending
with poverty.

As independent episodes, Siberian Lesson (1998) and
Argentinian Lesson (2011) have screened at film
festivals including True/False, RIDM and IDFA where
they have earned Staron, today a renowned
cinematographer who received a 2011 Berlinale Silver
Bear for Outstanding Artistic Achievement in
Cinematography, a reputation as a gifted
documentarian. The Maysles Cinema is proud to
premiere Two Lessons, a film that brings the two
halves of Staron's project together for the first
time.

Co-presented with Nonfiction Cinema Releasing.
Special thanks to Chris Boeckmann.