On Monday 29 June 2015, acclaimed Polish writer Mariusz Szczygiel joined an audience at the Frontline Club to introduce the film Gottland and to discuss his book of the same name. Bloomberg News writer Doug Lytle joined the panel for a discussion on Szczygiel‘s ongoing interest in Czech culture.
The international bestseller Gottland: Mostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia, published in English in late 2014, was awarded the European Book of the Year prize in 2009. The book attracted the attention of a group of young Czech filmmakers, who decided to use the text as a starting point for their collection of filmic interpretations.
“The film is inspired by my book, but it doesn’t illustrate it,” Szczygiel said. His remarks were relayed by Gottland translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones, who has also translated works writers including Ryszard Kapuscinski and Wojciech Jagielski.
Szczygiel explained to the Frontline Club audience his reasons for learning the Czech language. He wanted to tell the extraordinary life story of Czech singer Marta Kubišová but, as none of her family, friends and colleagues spoke English or Polish, he was unable to interview her. “So I did learn the Czech language for a particular singer,” he admitted.
Szczygiel elaborated on his views on the differences between Czech and Polish people with a number of personal stories. “I’ve got two posters at home,” he said. Both of them were designed to promote the 1965 Czech New Wave classic, Love of a Blonde by Miloš Forman. “The Czech one says [the film is] a comedy, the Polish one a psychological drama.”
Despite the many evident differences, the author concluded that the nations have more in common than one would expect. “Deep inside we’re exactly the same: sad, depressed. We have similar dramas inside. Except in one case it comes out as humour, to kill it a bit, and in the other version it comes out as melancholy,” Szczygiel said.
“I don’t speak about stereotypes; I give you facts,” Szczygiel remarked. He then went on to give an example of a feature of Czech identity that he has found to be largely true: “When a Czech man sits with his beer, it’s as if he was sitting in his own private church.”
Lytle concluded the discussion by asking about the second volume of Szczygiel‘s portrait of the country, Udělej si ráj (Make Your Own Paradise). The book has not yet been published in English, and explores, amongst other things, the regular occurrence of strictly religious Polish people living side-by-side with their atheist Czech neighbours, whose homeland is often described as the ‘most secular country in Europe.’
Click here for more information about Gottland: Mostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia.
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This screening will be preceded by a discussion with author Mariusz Szczygieł, translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones and chaired by Bloomberg News writer Doug Lytle.
The Frontline Club is delighted to partner with Czech Centre London, the Polish Institute and the 13th Kinoteka Polish Film Festival to bring you a screening of Gottland, directed by Viera Cákanyová, Petr Hátle, Rozálie Kohoutová, Lukás Kokes, Radovan Síbrt, and Klára Tasovská. Gottland is a cross-genre film based on selected parts of the international bestseller Gottland: Mostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia (European Book of the Year 2009) by Mariusz Szczygieł.
After reading his book about their compatriots, a group of young Czech filmmakers approached the Polish author to ask for his thoughts and advice on a film project based on five of the true stories he tells. Szczygieł replied that for a filmmaker, the best author is a dead, or at least a silent one, and that he would prefer to leave them to interpret his stories in their own way. The result is a film in five very different parts, each episode a spin-off from Szczygieł’s originals, rather than a retelling.
This event combines the literary and the cinematic versions. The screening of the Czech film will be preceded by a discussion with Mariusz Szczygieł about the source of inspiration for his moving and at times shocking accounts of the life stories of: the film star who was Goebbels’ mistress; the despotic founder of a shoe-making empire; the sculptor who lost his life creating the world’s biggest monument to Stalin; the writer who reinvented himself for political survival; and the ‘human torch’ who copied Jan Palach’s fateful gesture as recently as 2003.
Born in 1966, Mariusz Szczygieł has been a reporter for Gazeta Wyborcza since 1990. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his writing on Poland and Czechoslovakia, including the Europe Book Prize and the Prix l’Amphi for Gottland. From 1995-2001, he hosted his own talk show (Na każdy temat – ‘On Any Topic’), and he runs the Polish Reportage Institute in Warsaw together with Wojciech Tochman and Paweł Goźliński.
Translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones is the pre-eminent translator of Polish reportage: the authors she has translated include Wojciech Tochman, Wojciech Jagielski, Jacek Hugo-Bader, and Ryszard Kapuscinski. She received the Found in Translation Award from the Polish Cultural Institute in 2008 for her translation of Pawell Huelle’s novel The Last Supper.
This event is organised by the Polish Cultural Institute in London as part of the 13th Kinoteka Polish Film Festival in partnership with Czech Centre London.
Gottland (FILM)
Directed by Lukáš Kokeš, Petr Hátle, Viera Čákanyová, Rozálie Kohoutová, Klára Tasovská, Radovan Síbrt
Duration: 100′
Year: 2014
Czech Republic/Poland/Slovakia
Gottland: Mostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia (BOOK)
By Mariusz Szczygieł
Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Published by Melville House
Year: 2014
Rabbit à la Berlin
Academy Award-nominated documentary Rabbit à la Berlin uses the Berlin Wall rabbit population as a metaphor for the huge transition post-communist societies underwent. For 28 years, the Death Zone between the Berlin Walls was a safe home for wild rabbits: full of grass, no predators, guards protecting them from human disturbance. They were enclosed but happy. When the rabbit population grew to thousands, guards started to remove them but the rabbits survived and stayed until, one day, the wall fell down. The rabbits now had to abandon the comfortable system they had been living in. They moved to West Berlin, where they’ve have been living in small colonies ever since. They are still learning how to live in the free world, just as many citizens of Eastern Europe. Directed by Bartek Konopka and Piotr Rosołowski | Duration: 39’| Year: 2009
EXIT
In October 1989 the East German authorities tightened border security following the exodus of GDR citizens that had started earlier in the summer. Through exceptional and rare footage shot between 10 and 20 October 1989, Exit shows East German refugees who managed to cross the Polish border in order to reach the West German embassy in Warsaw. For the first time they talk openly about life in East Germany, not knowing the world is about to change. Directed by Małgorzata Bieńkowska-Buehlmann | Duration: 30′ | Year: 1990-2009
Oxygen
During the communist dictatorship in Romania (1945-1989), thousands of people risked their lives attempting to flee their country. Despair made them invent the most incredible methods to cross the border illegally. Some of them managed to escape, but many lost their lives in these attempts. Oxygen is a free re-enactment of a real case: a man who tried to cross the Danube illegally using an oxygen cylinder, to escape the communist Romania. Directed by Adina Pintilie | Duration: 30′ | Year: 2010
The screening of Rabbit à la Berlin kindly supported by Deckert Distribution
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Shorts at the Frontline Club on 1 February showcased five documentaries that highlight different ways of telling non-fictional stories. Four of the filmmakers were on hand to discuss the themes and process behind their work.
The first film of the evening, Afghanistan: The forgotten war, was shot by Vaughan Smith, who spent three weeks with the Grenadier Guards 3 Platoon in Helmand mid-2012. As the war in Afghanistan drops off ‘top stories of the year’ lists in the news, Smith asks what the soldiers are doing it for. It opens with an announcement of a casualty, Lance Corporal Groom, and the reactions of grief from fellow soldiers – a scene the MoD wanted removed in the final cut.
During the Q&A Smith said:
“I think it is important to show the suffering of war as well as the paraphernalia of war. . . . [The news] we get here is a long sequence of successes which somehow turns into a significant defeat. . . . What are they are fighting for? They are fighting for each other, for their regiment. . . . They are professional soldiers doing a job.”
The next film, Borderland, by Simon Mitchell, looks at the deep divisions of a Syria in conflict; divisions between and within nations, religions, communities and families.
“We have given a very black and white narrative from the outside, it suits our media, it suits our politicians . . . [but] there is a whole contradictory, confusing outlook from almost every perspective [on the ground],” Mitchell said.
From South Africa, Port Nolloth: Between a rock and a hard place is about a former deserted mining hub on the west coast. Filmed against a backdrop of desolate, barren landscape and sleepy shops, director Felix Seuffert introduces three characters and their stories – all tied to the diamond trade for better or worse. Seuffert was not on hand for the screening.
After, by Lukasz Konopa, is a silent ‘day-in-the-life’ of today’s Auschwitz. It is a meditative reflection beginning and ending with the routine maintenance and care of facilities as a variety of tourists cross the train tracks that once transported victims. The film is a student project inspired by the poem Campo dei Fiori by Polish Nobel Laureate Czesław Miłosz.
“[The film is about] how past and present melds, how do Europeans remember [the] past? Which, growing up in Poland, is [a] very important subject because wherever you go you see places where people were dying or were killed and it’s kind of normal, we get used to that, it’s everywhere,” Konopa said.
The last film of the evening was director Kate Sullivan’s Walk Tall, an animated portrait of 1948 Olympic gymnast and indefatigable nonagenarian George Weedon. It moves between filmed scenes of Weedon’s present-day campaign to improve the world’s posture and animated clips detailing his story and the challenges he overcame on the way to the Olympics.
]]>Sullivan said: “After his Olympic escapades [Weedon] worked for a great number of years as a builder and I just have a general love of DIY manuals, and that was the starting point for the styling [of the animation]. . . . The whole film is handmade, he is a guy with a handmade gym in a garden, so to me that was a lovely poetic thing.”
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The Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw was a despised gift from Stalin and after the fall of communism, some suggested pulling it down. Today, the palace is still standing, and is home to a theatre, a concert hall, a cinema, a swimming pool, and hundreds of offices.
Director Tomasz Wolski takes us on a cinematic journey through what is more than just a building: The Palace of Culture and Science is both a reflection of Poland’s everyday life and its rich history. Wolski also shows how the building is kept alive, how the Soviet machines are still working 50 years on.
Urszula Chowaniec, Ph.D., teaches at University College London School of Slavonic and East European Studies, where she is also head of eMigrating Lanscapes, a project on literary and artistic representations of emigration. She is currently writing a book on the notion of displacement as seen in literature in post-communist Poland.
Directed by Tomasz Wolski
Duration: 82′
Year: 2012
The evening will start with the short film Returns (PL)
On 10 April 2010, one of the most important dates in modern Polish history, 96 people, including the Polish president and government representatives died in a plane crash near Smolensk. They were on their way to Russia to participate in a ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, the mass murder of Polish officers carried out by the NKVD. Returns shows the preparations for the commemoration ceremony, resulting in a film as surreal as the events themselves.
Directed by Krzystof Kadlubowski
Duration: 7′
Year: 2010
The evening will include short stories capturing the essence of big issues; films showing life in other parts of the world under difficult or extraordinary circumstances; and stories focusing on one particular remarkable event or person.
This is the selection for this edition:
Borderland (UK)
Borderland is one man’s journey into the often contradictory and confusing Levantine world where no battle can be viewed separate from history or the agendas of all the world’s players.
Directed by Simon Mitchell
Duration: 16′
Year: 2012
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Afghanistan: the Forgotten War? (UK)
Vaughan Smith spent three weeks with the First Battalion of the Grenadier Guards in Helmand, Afghanistan, who are fighting a war that seems to have been forgotten.
Directed by Vaughan Smith
Duration: 11′
Year: 2012
After (UK)
Through a number of simple but meticulously crafted shots filmed over the course of an ordinary day at Auschwitz, the infamous death camp that is now an historic site, Lukasz Konopa creates a purely visual meditation on the nature of such places.
Directed by Lukasz Konopa
Duration: 7’
Year: 2011
Walk Tall (UK)
No sponsorship, one kidney, tuberculosis, a broken back: all set for the London Olympics of 1948. Walk Tall is a short animated/live action portrait of Olympic gymnast George Weedon.
Directed by Kate Sullivan
Duration: 10′
Year: 2012
Port Nolloth: Between a Rock and a Hard Place (South Africa)
Port Nolloth is a small town on the west coast of South Africa, tucked away in an inhospitable landscape. Back when there was diamond fever there, the town was buzzing with life – masses of fortune hunters descended on the area, hoping to strike gold. Now, the fever has passed and many dreams have remained unfulfilled.
Directed by Felix Seuffert
Duration: 22’
Year: 2012
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]]>There will be short stories capturing the essence of big issues; films showing life in other parts of the world under difficult or extraordinary circumstances; and stories focusing on one particular remarkable event or person.
Karama Has No Walls
Through the lenses of two cameramen and the accounts of two fathers, Karama Has No Walls retells the story of the people behind the statistics and news reports of the events that took place on the Friday of Dignity during the Yemeni revolution.
Directed by Sara Ishaq
Duration: 27′
Year: 2012
Prayers for Peace (USA)
Director Dustin Grella takes us on an introspective journey through the heart and soul of his brother’s death by an IED outside of Fallujah, the artist finds memory indelible as well as fleeting.
Director: Dustin Grella
Duration: 7′
Year: 2009
Leonids Story (Germany/Ukraine)
This magically animated film combines drawing, photography and documentary video to capture the surreal emotions of the too-real tragedy: Chernobyl1986. The events are told through a Soviet family whose search for a modest paradise is swept into an immense disaster.
Directed by Tetyana Chernyavska and Rainer Ludwigs
Duration: 19′
Year: 2011
Returns (PL)
On 10 April 2010, one of the most important dates in modern Polish history, 96 people, including the Polish president and government representatives died in a;plane crash near Smolensk. They were on their way to Russia to participate in a ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, the mass murder of Polish officers carried out by the NKVD. Returns shows the preparations for the commemoration ceremony, resulting in a film as surreal as the events themselves.
Directed by Krzystof Kadlubowski
Duration: 7′
Year: 2010
Lullaby (Russia)
A couple of homeless men lay sleeping on the floor of a bank vestibule. If you want to use the ATM, you’ll have to step right over them or find somewhere else. Kossakovsky captures the economic crisis in a single image.
Director: Victor Kossakovsky
Duration: 3′
Year: 2012
Uravel (India/UK)
Unravel follows the Western worlds least wanted clothes, on a journey across Northern India. With limited exposure to western culture, workers construct a picture of the West, using their imagination and the rumours that travel with the cast-offs.
Directed by Meghna Gupta
Duration: 14′
Year: 2012
Each edition of Shorts at the Frontline Club we invite someone closely involved in the London Documentary scene. This time the Doc Heads team will join us.
]]>The significance of Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński was the topic of a heated debate at the Frontline Club on 19 September.
Fans and a few critics flocked to the Frontline Club to discuss the writers’ life with: renowned Polish journalist and recent Kapuściński biographer, Artur Domoslawski; Victoria Brittain, former associate foreign editor at the Guardian; John Ryle, a British writer and specialist in Eastern Africa; and Antonia Lloyd-Jones, an award winning translator of Polish literature.
Revelations about Kapuściński’s possible involvement with the Communist Polish secret service, after his death in 2007, polarised opinion about the veracity of his writing and legitimacy of his position as one of the great journalists of the twentieth century.
Antonia Lloyd-Jones, who translated Artur Domoslawski’s book to English, said:
The facts of Kapuściński’s biography don’t detract from Kapuściński as a writer. It made me want to read his books again.”
Lloyd-Jones’ thoughts reflect the tone of the debate; most wanted to focus on the singular brilliance and political significance of Kapuściński’s reportage, rather than possible inaccuracies. Victoria Brittain, an “unabashed Kapuściński fan”, referred to the event’s title Where does journalism end and literature begin? as “quite unhelpful”. “I think more interesting is Kapuściński,” she said.
Aside from the literary quality of his writing, Brittain said Kapuściński’s work was relevant and important. She recalled meeting people living in Angola during her time reporting there who read his book Another Day of Life about the Angolan civil war.
“…people in Angola lived with him, really enjoyed him and found the book told the story they wanted told”.
John Ryle, a lone detractor during the debate, said adulation of Kapuściński should not distract from questions over the truthfulness of the writer’s accounts.
“He was a great stylist, but if you are interested in the history of Ethiopia it is problematic,” he said.
Ryle was concerned that though readers in the west and Poland voice opinions on the significance of Kapuściński’s work, little attention is given to his subjects, particularly those in Africa.
“It is important not to allow our admiration for his style, I don’t think we should take that as an authority about the things he writes about,” he said. It is not just the “elasticity of the facts”, he added, “but the whole representation of Africa.”
To support his argument Ryle referred to the Granta article by Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina, How to Write About Africa. “The main inspiration for the essay was Kapuściński,” said Ryle.
But Domoslawski staunchly defended Kapuściński, his work and his legacy. Kapuściński’s style derived from a school of reportage particular to communist Poland, he said, which was heavily censored at the time.
“Reportage became a description of the darker side of reality of life in Poland under Communism. The reporters changed the names of the people in order to [protect] them, they created fictional characters,” he said. “From the perspective of the free world you can say that is absolutely unacceptable in journalism.”
However, at the time it was necessary to convey a certain message. In reference to criticism of Kapuściński’s book The Emperor, about the last days of Haile Selassie in Ethiopia, Domoslawski said people reading it in Poland at the time saw it as an allegory of their own society. One of the sources for his book told him that, “The Emperor was the best Polish novel of the 20th century”. Domoslawski added: “I think Kapuściński wouldn’t mind [this accolade].”
Where does journalism end and literature begin? The question remained unanswered as both the audience and panel succumbed to the “great seducer” Kapuściński. However, insight into the creation of lyrical, yet accurate, reporting came from Domoslawski:
“Instinctively, you can write things that capture the spirit of the moment. You have to use real ingredients, you can’t make things up. There are some descriptions in Kapuściński’s books which are very poetic, they are literature but they are journalism.”
Watch the full discussion here:
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By Nicole Hunt
Though it’s sometimes difficult to keep track of which Silvio Berlusconi trial is currently in court, Monday sees the resumption of the most infamous of his four cases, in which he faces charges for abuse of power and paying for underage sex. The Italian Senate has approved a motion to move the case from Milan’s court to a special minister’s court, but the case remains in Milan while the Constitutional Court mulls the Senate’s request.
The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly opens, with more attention than usual being paid this time around. On Tuesday, the Assembly debates a motion that would recommend taking action against pre-natal sex selection in Europe, particularly in Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, where the ratio of girls to boys in the population is dropping. On Thursday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the assembly.
Following a meeting of Eurogroup Finance Ministers on Monday, all EU Finance Ministers convene in Luxembourg on Tuesday, with the focus, as with many things this week, squarely on Greece. Discussions are also expected on an EU financial transaction tax, after the European Commission published proposals last week.
In direct response to the austerity measures being so closely watched by the European Finance Ministers, Greek public sector workers hold a 24-hour strike on Wednesday, calling the cuts ‘barbaric’. A general strike is also planned for 19 October.
Meanwhile, in Brussels, German Chancellor Angela Merkel attends the weekly meeting of the European College of Commissioners. At NATO headquarters, NATO Defence Ministers hold a regular meeting to discuss operational issues, with Libya topping the agenda.
Former Bosnian-Serb Army Commander Ratko Mladic is back in court in The Hague on Thursday. Since his last appearance on 25 August, Mladic’s lawyers have requested the names of all 7,000 victims of the Srebrenica massacre as part of their opposition to the indictment.
In Johannesburg, the African National Congress’ disciplinary committee resumes hearing the charges against controversial youth leader Julius Malema, who is accused of interrupting an ANC Officials meeting alongside three other men. Malema faces separate charges of bringing the ANC into disrepute and sowing divisions within ANC ranks, which will be heard separately once this case has concluded. It’s currently scheduled to last two days, but has already been delayed several times.
Friday is, oddly, both the 10 year anniversary of the beginning of the War in Afghanistan and also the date for the announcement of the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. Anti-war activists hold mass demonstrations in London and Washington on Saturday, while the Peace Prize will be presented to the winner on 10 December.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu celebrates his 80th birthday and a year since he stepped down from public duties. Three days of celebrations are being held in Cape Town, and a new biography is being released to mark the day.
Spanish ‘indignant’ activists who have marched 1500km from Madrid are scheduled to arrive in Brussels on Saturday to hold a demonstration against unrepresentative politics. The protesters, who are joined by counterparts from across Europe, plan to hold a week of events, culminating in a large rally on 15 October.
Two elections take place on Sunday: voters in Poland elect 460 members to their lower house and 100 members to their upper house of parliament, while in Cameroon voters elect their president for the next seven years. Incumbent Paul Biya is only the second president since independence in 1960, and has held the post since 1982.
The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is in Zimbabwe on Sunday, making him the first high-profile UK official to visit the country since 2001. The visit is part of a three-country pastoral tour which also includes Malawi and Zambia. Williams is expected to meet with President Robert Mugabe, and is scheduled to hold a special service for members of the Anglican Church who have not joined a splinter movement set up by the former Bishop of Harare.
]]>"Kania Lodge near the Hanseatic Port of Gdansk in Poland turns out to be the perfect place to write, and I’ve been looking for years. Also good for holidays. The staff provides all services, the food is impeccable and the wine selection one of the best outside Berry Brothers’ cellars. Proprietor John Borrell is a veteran war correspondent, who did his time in Africa, the Mideast and Central America for TIME. He’s offering a ten per cent discount to all Frontline members on rooms, food, wine and services. It’s a great time." link
Incidentally Charles will be at the Club on March 24 to discuss his new book, Americans in Paris Life and Death under Nazi Occupation 1940-44.
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