📅 Date: 16.00 – 18.00 | 30.05.2025
📍 Venue: Auditorium | Warsaw University Library [link to Google Map].
89 mm from Europe, dir. by M. Lozinski, 1993, 12 min.
Królik po berlińsku (Rabbit à la Berlin), dir. by B. Konopka, 2009, 51 min.
In the early 1990s, the illusion prevailed that the world was unifying, the boundaries between classes, nations, systems, people were breaking down. Meanwhile… perhaps everything stands in its former place? The tracks going east will always have a different width, and the ghost of the Berlin Wall still hovers over Europe.
Two films of the golden era of Polish documentary, two Oscar nominations. 89 mm from Europe by Marcel Lozinski and Rabbit a la Berlin by Bartosz Konopka find universal and still extremely relevant content.
After the screening we invite you to a Q&A with invited guests:
dr. hab. MICHAŁ BILEWICZ, prof. scholar, social psychologist | University of Warsaw
BARTOSZKONOPKA, director, film expert
MICHAŁA. ZIELIŃSKI, screenwriter, journalist
Moderation: JAKUB MAJMUREK, film scholar, journalist
89 mm from Europe, dir. by M. Lozinski, 1993, 12 min.
🎥 The setting of this masterful film is the Brest border crossing between Poland and Belarus, where trains from Europe are being switched to 89mm wider tracks. A Paris-Moscow express arrives. The carriages with their passengers are lifted into the air, the undercarriages are replaced. The international audience lazily watches the workers at work. In a moment the train will move on. Workers wait for the next transport. That’s all. This everyday situation is told by Marcel Lozinski in a compelling way, with the use of cinematic suspense. Reality is broken down and reassembled so that every detail becomes intriguing. The faces and gestures of the workers, the pigeon trotting along the edge of the platform, the skinny cat carrying something in its mouth, the abandoned oiler – everything is interesting, becoming part of some unknowable whole. Each of us sometimes makes such a film without a camera, from the windows of the train, breaking the distance. Perhaps this is what cinema is all about: breaking the distance. In this film, the breakthrough comes thanks to the child on the train, a little boy who looks at the world with curiosity. From somewhere it is known that this is the son of the director, whose life really runs between Paris and Moscow.
Królik po berlińsku (Rabbit à la Berlin), dir. by B. Konopka, 2009, 51 min.
🎥 The remarkable story of the Berlin Wall as seen from the perspective of the rabbits who lived there. In 1961, the animals were trapped in the greenbelt dividing East and West Berlin. They stayed there until the wall was torn down in 1989, participating in subsequent historical events. Thus, the Berlin rabbits shared the fate of the East German residents of the time, who led a precarious life in isolation from the world under the watchful eye of the Communist government. The film was nominated for an Academy Award.
To participate in the show, you must register your participation:
Substantive partnership: Wajda School Foundation
