Event

EMIGRANTS SUITCASE + PAST STATES + HOW TO BECOME A POPE?

EMIGRANTS SUITCASE
WALIZKA EMIGRANTA
1983 restored, 33 min, Poland, USA
English, Polish with English subtitles
dir. EUGENE STARKY

In 1981 a martial law is declared in Poland. Tree top Polish artist: a writer and poet Stanislaw Baraczak, a painter Jan Sawka and jazz musician Adam Makowicz, found themselves in the USA with no possibility to return. All they have is the emigrants suitcase, a metaphor for Solidarity movement.

PAST STATES
STANY PRZESZLE
2017, 29 min, Poland
Polish with English subtitles
dir. OLGA BLUMCZYNSKA

A Polish emigrant, Martynka, after 15 years of living on Manhattan, has decided to look for a new home on Greenpoint. It is a district which used to remind her of Polish folk and the type of emigrant she did not want to identify herself with before. Now, however, she finds that missing family brings her here. She gets in touch with people who came to New York 20-30 years ago, not ready for what was awaiting them over the ocean. Her neighbor Henryk becomes her friend and helps her out in difficult moments. Helena, an elderly lady living in a nursing house, inspires her to create an artistic project. The protagonist gets to know their determination, stories about loneliness, fear but also about finding ones place in a foreign land. The film depicts transformations taking place now on Greenpoint, once a typically Polish district, now an international melting pot.

HOW TO BECOME A POPE?
JAK ZOSTA PAPIEZEM?
2017, 16 min, Poland
Polish with English subtitles
dir. JUSTYNA MYTNIK

In this warm-hearted documentary about a ten-year-old boy who wants to become the Pope, the protagonist is an altar boy, who wants to audition for the part of John Paul II in a musical. The boy approaches this task as if it was a holy mission, but his parents do not treat him seriously. What is he going to learn?