An exhibition ‘The Dreamt History of Cinema in Podlasie’ is on display at the Kinoteka in the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw. All its protagonists are Podlasie-born people who have influenced the history of Polish and world cinema. They include director Andrzej Wajda, cinematographer Boris Kaufman, choreographer Benjamin Zemach and actresses Nora Ney and Renata Radojewska.
The idea for this unusual project originated in 2021 by the members of the Kaufman Bros & Sistas collective: Dr Tomasz Adamski, a film scholar from the University of Bialystok and an independent filmmaker, Maciej Rant, an independent filmmaker and artistic director of the ŻUBROFFKA festival, and Andrzej Górski, a photographer and reconstructionist of 19th-century photography.
As the creators say, the exhibition is an expedition into the past with the protagonists of 40 photographs. The photographs, taken in the archaic wet collodion technique, feature Academy Award winners and nominees such as Andrzej Wajda, Boris Kaufman and Benjamin Zemach, documentary cinema icon Dziga Vertov or famous pre-war actresses Nora Ney, Renata Radojewska and Tola Mankiewiczówna.
The photographs also feature Yiddish cinema and theatre stars Mina Bern and Miriam Kressin, prominent film music composers: Mischa Spoliansky, who discovered Marlene Dietrich, and Jay Gorney, who brought Shirley Temple to film, the extraordinary costume and set designer Aleksandra Ekster, one of the leading cinematographers of Polish cinema Albert Wywerka, and the inventor Piotr Lebiedzinski, who competed with the Lumiere brothers.
They were all born in Białystok or the Podlasie region and had a real impact on the history of Polish and world cinema. The characters from the past are played by contemporary artists and filmmakers, also related to the region. The producer of the exhibition and publisher of the album is the Białystok Cultural Centre. The album and exhibition were created as part of the East of Culture / Other Dimension 2021 – 2022 Festival.
Arkadiusz Słomczyński