Still from Kathleene by Joanna Raczynska
Wednesday March 5 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS
We are pleased to present an evening of films by Joanna Raczynska, who will be present for a discussion with the audience following the screening.
The Essential Chair (1997, 16mm film to digital video, 5 minutes)
Exploring the platonic ideal of what it means to be “a father” through found and original footage, my relationship to my ageing dad is part memoir and part performance.
Kathleene (1997, 16mm to digital video, silent, 4 minutes)
A portrait of a friend, a rebuff of heteronormative marriage, and a chance to get acquainted with the rewind crank and some mattes.
The Past is a Foreign Country (1998, digital video, 8 minutes)
Seeing Warsaw (2001, digital video, 23 minutes)
“Seeing Warsaw” was developed as my MA thesis film over 2000-2001. Heavily reliant on interviews and first person accounts, the work asks Polish Underground Army fighters to recount experiences fighting fascists in Warsaw during WWII as well as resisting post war occupation. Rewatching this title now in the maga era takes on a new resonance.
Signature of Things (2005, digital video, 6 minutes)
“Signature of Things” honors my father who died in 2004, as well as his father who was executed by the SS in 1944. Memories can become as solid as objects or artifacts, while their retelling can become as common place and comfortable as everyday furniture.
Good Faith Effort (2006, miniDV, 12 minutes)
In 1989, after fifty years of occupation, Poland held its first free post-WWII elections and ushered in a democratic republic system of government. Good Faith Effort asks young Poles in the capital of Warsaw to remember that pivotal moment. Supported in part by CEC Artslink and the Experimental Television Center’s Finishing Funds, a program supported by the Electronic Media and Film Program at the New York State Council on the Arts.
Strange Intimacy (digital video and 16mm film, approximately 5 minutes)
A work in progress using recent footage from cell phones and a twenty-year old roll of black and white 16mm film exposed underground at the ancient Wieliczka salt mine near Krakow, Poland.
Based in Baltimore, film programmer Joanna Raczynska organizes screenings and time-based media artist presentations for the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (2009-present). She has worked with a variety of non-profit organizations including Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; and the Baltimore Museum of Art, among others. She has served as a juror for many international film festivals including Animator, Poznan, Poland; Berwick, U.K.; Images, Toronto, Canada; and Oberhausen, Germany, and participated with a variety of funding agencies including the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, the DC Commission on the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts in their allocation of funding. Joanna earned her master’s degree in documentary by practice, Royal Holloway College, University of London (2001), attended classes in film at University of Maryland Baltimore County, and earned a BA in English Literature and Women’s Studies from University of Maryland College Park.