Projection – Warsaw: a divided city by Éric Bednarski

Sunday 6 DECEMBER

broadcast until December 8 

Warsaw: a divided city by Éric Bednarski

Poland, documentary, 70 min, The Mazovia Institute of Culture, The Adam Mickiewicz Institute / Culture.pl, TVP, Pado Studio Film, Eric Bednarski, 2019, Vostfr.

Synopsis: In 1941, shortly after the creation of the Warsaw ghetto by the Nazis, a Polish amateur filmmaker clandestinely filmed life on both sides of the ghetto walls. These unpublished archives have become the guiding thread of the documentary Warsaw: a divided city. Through the testimonies of survivors, historians and architects, the film probes the traces left by the past in today’s Warsaw.

Presentation of the film by Eric Bednarski:

Eric Bednarski is a Canadian writer, director and producer. His work focuses on European and North American history. His documentary films with the National Film Board of Canada were awarded the Gemini Award. He was also nominated for the Writers Guild of Canada Award. He was distinguished with the honorary title of 'Meritorious for Polish Culture' awarded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

His films have been shown on television in many countries, but also at international festivals, the United Nations, the European Parliament and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

Presentation by Jean-Charles Szurek and Miłosz Hermanowicz.

About Jean-Charles Szurek:

Jean-Charles Szurek is emeritus research director at the CNRS, a specialist in Poland and Jewish-Polish relations.

His main research themes are: "The Judeo-Polish relations under the German occupation and the examination of this past in Polish historiography and in the memorial components of this country since the end of the 2nd World War".

Main publications:

• The Poles and the Holocaust: A New Historical School [co-edited with Audrey Kichelewski, Judith Lyon-Caen, Annette Wieviorka], CNRS Editions, 2019.
• 'The poviate of Lukow', in Further on, it’s still night. The fate of the Jews in occupied Poland [dir. Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski], ed. in Polish, 2018, pp. 547-620. English version to be published by Yad Vashem/Indiana University Press.
• Poland, the Jews and Communism, edited by Michel Houdiard, 2012.
• Jews and Poles 1939-2008 [co-dir. with Annette Wieviorka], Albin Michel, 2009.

About Miłosz Hermanowicz:

Miłosz Hermanowicz has had experience as an editor for television and then cinema for about fifteen years. He has edited documentaries like Minkowski Saga directed by Rafael Lewandowski or Warsaw: Divided City directed by Eric Bednarski. He also directed four short films.

Chosen filmography:

2021 Herbert, a barbarian in the garden, documentary, 90', real. Rafael Lewandowski.

2018 Warsaw: divided city, documentary, 70', real. Eric Bednarski.

2016 Out of the limelight, documentary, 85 réal. Rafael Lewandowski.

2013 Minkowski | Saga, documentary, 85 , réal. Rafael Lewandowski. Attention, mural painting! , 3D documentary, 8 , réal. Julia Pelka.

2008 Andrzej Wajda: Let’s Shoot!, documentary, 52', real. collective Paladino.