Border States + discussion panel

Border States + discussion panel

7.12.2022, 15:00
Uniwersyteckie Centrum Kultury / UwB, 1N Ciołkowskiego St.
admission free   

A girl from Afghanistan, camping out with a group of refugees near the village of Usnarz Gorny and holding a grey cat in her arms.
The dumped body of a three-year-old Syrian boy on the Turkish shore with his red T-shirt rolled up and his face flooded with sea water.
Crowds of Ukrainian refugees tightly filling the waiting room of the Przemyśl train station.
Caption: STATE OF EXCEPTION AREA on a road sign.
What images stand before our eyes when we think of borders, refugees, humanitarian crises today?

The filmmakers of the short films shown in the Border States set use their own visual languages to talk about different aspects of today’s refugee crises. They focus the cameras’ eyes on those fleeing, tracking, sheltering and profiting from others’ misfortune. They take us from the Białowieża Forest to Hungarian highways and the Turkish province. They peep at reality in documentary convention or tell fictional stories. What these films have in common is a sense of immense moral anxiety, which we increasingly feel when we think about borders, refugees and humanitarian crises.

Curators: Maciej Białous, Krzysztof Sienkiewicz

Program:
Dalej jest dzień, Damian Kocur, Poland 2020, 25’
Dark Chamber, Ottó Bánovits, Sweden/Hungary 2017, 5’40”
Bulak, Evrim İnci, Turkey, 2021, 4’20”
Hranice, Damián Vondrášek, Czech Republic, 29’
Podlasie. Granica światów, Katarzyna Lazzeri, Poland, 23’

Panelists

Katarzyna Winiecka
PhD in sociology, assistant professor at the Department of Sociology of Culture of the Institute of Sociology at the University of Bialystok, scientifically interested in the lives of Polish post-accession migrants and the process of social adaptation; social skills trainer. She is associated with the Terra Diversa Laboratory research group.

Agnieszka Sadowska
Photographer and press photojournalist born in Ełk, juror in photo contests. Graduate of the Higher School of Photography in Warsaw. She worked in the photographic team of the Polish Studios for Conservation of Cultural Property (PPKZ S.A.), then as a photojournalist and photo editor in “Plus” – a weekly magazine and – for 28 years – as a photojournalist in Bialystok’s “Gazeta Wyborcza”. For years she has been documenting social and cultural events in the Podlasie region. She is one of the ten protagonists of the book “Jedyne. Nieopowiedziane historie polskich fotografek” (The One. Untold stories of Polish women photographers). The fascinating stories, told by Monika Szewczyk-Wittek, reveal the backstage of photojournalistic work and the often winding paths to the profession.

Artur Reszko
Born in 1979, a Białystok resident, works as a staff photojournalist at the Polish Press Agency. Curator and producer of exhibitions. Led and co-founded Gallery 113, produced exhibitions at Arsenal Gallery. Graduate and master’s student in the Institute of Creative Photography, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Silesian University, Opava, (Czech Republic). On a daily basis, he deals with reportage and informational photography, also realises documentary projects.