22nd WJFF: "Post-Jewish" – a discussion
The screenings of films that touch on the sensitive issue of lost Jewish heritage and on the attempts to restore it raise many questions and doubts. How should we speak about "post-Jewish" today? Join us for a discussion with the filmmakers and invited guests following the screening of the documentary "My Father's Castle."
- 9 November (Saturday), 5PM
- Conference Room A
The films screened as part of the 22nd Warsaw Jewish Film Festival—"Treasure," "The Custodians" (screening at the Muranów Cinema), and "My Father's Castle"—will serve as inspiration for the discussion, its central theme being the restoration of memory of the irretrievably lost Jewish heritage, not only in the context of lost property.
"Post-Jewish" as a story of Jewish places and their inhabitants is also the topic of our current temporary exhibition which documents research and artistic interventions conducted in the former shtetl of Opatów, aimed at uncovering traces of Jewish life in the town and reclaiming their history. The exhibition presents paintings by Mayer Kirshenblatt (who serves as its main protagonist and guide), contemporary photos depicting surviving fragments of the Jewish past, as well as various objects related to this past. The exhibition’s set design was built from wood reclaimed from Opatów’s houses that fell into ruin and were being pulled down.
Participants in the discussion which will combine motifs from films, artistic exploration, and historical knowledge are: Dr Natalia Romik – co-curator of the exhibition "(post)JEWISH… Shtetl Opatów Through the Eyes of Mayer Kirshenblatt," Filip Flatau – director of "My Father's Castle," and journalist, reporter, and writer Anna Bikont.
The discussion will be chaired by Michał Nogaś, a radio journalist. We encourage you to listen to him in a podcast series "Life in Someone Else's Shoes."
Dr. Natalia Romik is a public historian, architect, and artist. Her work focuses on Jewish memory and Holocaust commemoration in Eastern Europe, particularly Poland and Ukraine. She has collaborated as a curator and exhibition designer at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. She is a winner of the 2022 Dan David Prize, the largest prize in the field of history in the world.
Filip Flatau – writer, director, and actor born in Paris in 1980 to a Polish family. Immersed in the world of art from childhood (his mother is a painter), he studied piano at a conservatory. A film enthusiast, he studied audiovisual culture and directed his first short films already during his studies. In 2020, he made a documentary titled "The Form."
Anna Bikont is a journalist and a non-fiction writer. She works on the Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust and on the literature and history of postwar Poland. In 1989, she was a co- founder of Gazeta Wyborcza, the first independent daily in post-Communist Europe and the main newspaper in Poland, with which she is still associated.
Michał Nogaś – journalist, in the years 2000–2016 at the Program 3 of the Polish Radio, later with Gazeta Wyborcza daily and Nowy Świat radio station. Since February 2024 he has been deputy editor-in-chief at the Polish Radio Program 3.
