AVANT-GARDE FILMS BY POLISH WOMEN ARTISTS OF THE 1970s

Artists: Izabella Gustowska, Iwona Lemke-Konart, Jolanta Marcolla, Natalia LL, Ewa Partum, Teresa Tyszkiewicz

Organizers: Anthology Film Archives, Polish Cultural Institute in New York, Arton Foundation

Screenings: January 13 – January 26

Streaming online starting January 13

The 1970s represented a period of revival in Polish art, which manifested itself in artists’ interest in new media, among other aspects. An especially striking feature of the art of the period was a strong tendency to engage with the moving image, and in particular with the nascent medium of video, which made its appearance within the realm of Polish art in 1973. Women were pioneers in the fields of both avant-garde film and video, despite the extremely limited access to film cameras (and especially portable video cameras) in Poland under communism. Notwithstanding these obstacles and the fact that art academies in Poland did not offer the possibility to work with the medium of film, female artists succeeded in developing their own, original filmic language. They created both analytical and Conceptual works – structural films and impressionistic pieces devoted to the question of gender, approaching womanhood and its experience from a variety of perspectives. This program embraces films representing both these tendencies and features recently re-discovered films, such as ARTA by Teresa Tyszkiewicz, which had not been digitized until 2020, as well as films by Jadwiga Singer, whose archive has been in the custody of the Arton Foundation since 2018.

We would like to thank the following artists and institutions for making the films available: Izabella Gustowska, Iwona Lemke-Konart, Jolanta Marcolla, Natalia LL, Ewa Partum, Jadwiga and Jacek Singer’s family, Zdzisław Sosnowski, lokal_30 Gallery, and Filmoteka Muzeum of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.

Program:

Jolanta Marcolla
CAP (1975, 5.5 min)
FORCED RESPONSE (1976, 1.5 min)
CAPRICE (1975, 4.5 min)
KISS (1975, 2 min)

Jadwiga Singer
FIGHT (1979, 2.5 min)
DESTRUCTION (1978, 1.5 min)
50 KM /H (1978, 2.5 min)
13 SHOTS (1978, 5.5 min)
MASTER MIND (1979, 3 min)

Iwona Lemke-Konart
ART IS IN LIFE (1984, 9 min)
PICTURES (1984, 3 min)
LIMITS OF HUMAN POSSIBILITIES (1984, 3 min)

Izabella Gustowska
RELATIVE SIMILARITIES (1979/80, 4.5 min)

Teresa Tyszkiewicz
ARTA (1984/85, 3 min)
BREATH (1981, 17 min)
DAY AFTER DAY (1980, 16 min)

Natalia LL
PERMANENT MEASUREMENT OF EVERY 1 KM OF THE E22 MOTORWAY (1970, 2 min)
PERMANENT MEASUREMENT OF TIME (1970, 35 sec)

Ewa Partum
TV DRAWINGS (1976, 6 min)
TAUTOLOGICAL CINEMA (1973, 4.5 min)
CHANGE. MY PROBLEM IS A PROBLEM OF A WOMAN (1979, 7 min)