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We will focus on a single case study of the “politics of the hyphen”, i.e. complex identities created at the intersections of race, nationalities, and gender: experimental films made by Zuza Banasińska, an artist and filmmaker from Warsaw, currently based in Amsterdam. In their essay films and installations, they animate spectral realities sedimented within archives, investigating processes of standardized knowledge production. They studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, the University of the Arts in Berlin, and the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. Their works have been shown in spaces such as the U-Jazdowski CCA in Warsaw, Dům Umění Mesta Brna in Brno and Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, among others.
We will meet with Banasińska and discuss her short Grandmamauntsistercat, based on archive footage obtained from the Educational Film Studio in Łódź. The film turns propagandistic sources into a multi-level investigation of matriarchy, family, generational changes and the reproduction of knowledge. The workshops will be conducted by Sebastian Smoliński, film critic, lecturer at the American Studies Center at the University of Warsaw and artistic director of Timeless Film Festival Warsaw.
Zuza Banasińska is an artist and filmmaker from Warsaw, currently based in Amsterdam. In their essay films and installations, they use archives to examine how the reproduction of images enables the reproduction of systems, subjects and bodies. They studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, at the University of the Arts in Berlin, and at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. Their works have been shown in spaces such as the U-Jazdowski CCA in Warsaw, Dům Umění Mesta Brna in Brno, and Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, among others. Their work is currently supported by the Mondriaan Fund, Netherlands Film Fund, and Stimuleringsfonds, and is distributed by Video Power and EYE Filmmuseum. Their newest film premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2024 and the 74th Berlinale, where it received the Teddy Award for best short film.
Sebastian Smoliński- a film scholar and critic, PhD student at the American Studies Center at the University of Warsaw. Co-author of several publications, including the Spanish-language monograph La doble vida de Krzysztof Kieślowski (2015), a book about American cinema, and a Polish-English monograph of David Lynch. Recipient of the 2019-2020 Kosciuszko Foundation scholarship for teaching the history of Polish film at Cleveland State University in Ohio. He is preparing his PhD dissertation about film criticism and the construction of national identity. Co-host of the podcast Foreign Correspondents: Deeper into Hitchcock and artistic director of Timeless Film Festival Warsaw.
The event is part of the Spring School Event Series 2024 sponsored by the EUTERPE Project, curated by the Women's Studies Centre at the University of Łódź.
EUTERPE website: https://euterpeproject.eu
