Polish cinema is often seen as dark, cryptic, and often depressing with its focus on history. Yet, Martin Scorsese says, “Humour and tragedy are very close in Polish cinema”. New Polish cinema is becoming transnational and liberated, especially after the political transformation of 1989 and, more recently, the 2005 law regulating the film industry. What…
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How do we explain the remarkable international prestige achieved by Polish poetry in the last half-century? Why did the Russian Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky learn Polish in order to read what he called “the most extraordinary poetry” of the twentieth century in the original? What would American poets and critics do without Czesław Miłosz and…
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Join us for a presentation and panel discussion featuring Consul General of Poland Mariusz Brymora and Lila Cohen, Director of the American Jewish Committee Seattle. The speakers will discuss a historical context of Polish-Jewish relations, the Holocaust, and recent Jewish culture revival in Poland. The event will be followed by an official opening of the…
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The exhibit tells stories of ordinary people who made heroic choices to save their Jewish friends, neighbors, and often complete strangers, from being persecuted or sent to the concentration camps during the II WW Nazi German occupation of Poland. They demonstrated their courage and compassion for saving human lives by risking to sacrifice their own…
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After WWII there was a significant shift in the visual principles of rendering the operations of the Nazi camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, its history and its moral significance. Soviet and Polish filmmakers established the cinematographic conventions of Holocaust documentaries which contributed to the conceptualization of concentration camps and industrial genocide as modernist events. The films in question…
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Agata Zubel, a Polish composer and singer, has been hailed by The New York Times as an important new voice in contemporary music. The artist’s talk will be dedicated to her own compositions with a focus on their vocal aspects. On October 28, 2016, Ms. Zubel will perform her composition Chapter 13 at the Benaroya…
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The documentary directed by Sławomir Grünberg relates a story of over 1400 Polish refugees freed from the WWII Soviet camps, including hundreds of orphans, who found a friendly home in Santa Rosa, Mexico from 1943 to 1946. Mr. Grünberg is a Polish-born American documentary film maker and will be present at the screening. Also present,…
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Karski and the Lords of Humanity is a feature-length documentary that tells a story of the Polish underground envoy, Jan Karski. During WWII, he carried his eyewitness reports from the Warsaw Ghetto to leaders of Great Britain and the United States, the “Lords of Humanity”, as Karski would call them. The film combines animation with…
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An international team chases an improbable dream: reconstructing one of Poland’s most magnificent, lost wooden synagogues. Presented by Stroum Jewish Community Center. More Information
Join us at Silent Auction and Dinner benefiting the University of Washington Polish Studies Program Date: Saturday, February 20, 2016 Time: 6:00 pm – Silent auction and cocktails 7:00 pm – Dinner Place: University of Washington Club on the UW campus (free parking after noon on Saturdays) Keynote Speaker Magdalena Sroka, General Director of the Polish…
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Jurek is a documentary about Jerzy Kukuczka (1948-1989), a Polish mountaineer, considered to be one of the best high-altitude climbers in history. He ascended fourteen of the world’s tallest mountains in less than eight years, a world record he held for 27 years. Kukuczka established several new mountain routes, ascending often in winter, and mostly…
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Exactly how different is Social Realism from Socialist Realism? Are there any similarities between these seemingly distant genres? Dr. Gabrielson will explore the nuances of American Realism from Norman Rockwell to the Works Progress Administration, and compare it with Socialist Realism, which was imposed on poster art throughout the former Eastern Bloc. Dr. Izabela Gabrielson…
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The exhibit presents the story of Jan Karski and the events that led to Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel’s assertion that “Thanks to him, more than one generation continues to believe in humanity.” During World War II, as a courier of the Polish Underground State and emissary of the Polish government-in-exile, Jan Karski traveled undercover to…
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The dramatic visit of Pope John Paul II to his native Poland in June 1979 was one of the most significant events of the twentieth century. Professor James Felak will draw from his research at the Archiwum Akt Nowych (The Central Archives of Modern Records) and Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (The Institute of National Remembrance) in…
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European and American art of the19th and early 20th centuries responded to the birth of the New Woman and the beginning of the feminist movement by categorizing women into two opposite types. They were presented either as blood-thirsty creatures from Greek mythology, as Salome obsessed with the decapitation of a lover, as poison flowers and vamps or as…
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UWPSEC presents an evening celebrating the life and music of the great Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski. The event will begin with an introduction by Prof. Huck Hodge from the UW School of Music, followed by a short documentary about Lutoslawski’s life and times by Esa-Pekka Salonen and Steven Stucky. Following the film, Partita for Violin and Piano will be performed by the…
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Nicole Piasecki is vice president and general manager of the Propulsion Systems Division of Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA). Named to the position in March 2013, she is responsible for engine and propulsion systems strategy, procurement, contracting, engineering, and manufacturing integration for all commercial airplane programs, in addition to support for more than 12,000 in-service airplanes.…
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April 25, 2013, 7:30 pm Kane 220 Challenges of Facial Transplantation co sponsored by UW Division of Plastic Surgery The lecture presents challenges encountered during establishment of Face Transplantation Program at Cleveland Clinic. These include medical, surgical as well as ethical challenges. The process of patient selection as well as face transplant outcomes are also…
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April 10, 2013, 7:00 pm Thomson 101 Two Fatherlands? Zionist Youth and the Politics of Belonging in 1930s Poland Dr. Daniel K. Heller, Hazel D. Cole Fellow in Jewish Studies, Jackson School of International Studies, is an expert on Eastern European Jewish history and the history of Israel. By exploring the performances of a Polish-Zionist…
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Guest Speaker: Rafal Olbinski Date: January 17, 2013 Time: 7:30pm Place: Walker Ames Room, Kane Hall, UW Campus Free and open to the public; reception after the lecture Official opening of the exhibit by Rafal Olbinski Date: January 17, 2013 Time: 6:30PM Place: Allen Library North Lobby,UW Campus Date: January 8-29, 2013 Free and open…
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Timothy Snyder Kane Hall 120, UW Campus May 23, 2012, 7 pm Timothy Snyder is the Bird White Housum Professor of History at Yale University, specializing in the political history of central and eastern Europe. He received his B.A. from Brown University and his doctorate from the University of Oxford, where he was a British Marshall…
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Poland: A New Growth Pole in Europe Thursday, January 12, 2012, 7:30AM-8:30AM Breakfast/Presentation World Trade Center 2200 Alaskan Way, Suite 410, Seattle, WA, 98121 The event is organized by Polish American Chamber of Commerce Pacific Northwest (PACCPN) To register, go to PACCPN website Poland is known to be the only EU member country not to…
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Milosz and the American Poets He Loved. . . and Hated January 11, 2012, 7:30PM Walker-Ames Room at Kane Hall, UW Campus Lecture is free and open to the public Czeslaw Milosz lived in the United States for more than four decades, most of them as citizen. Though his cultural and poetic roots were in…
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The Polish Presidency of the EU:Implications for Europe & Transatlantic Relations Maciej Pisarski,Deputy Chief of Mission, Embassy of Poland November 14,2011 3:30 PM Allen Auditorium, Allen Library Maciej Pisarski is the Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Washington,DC, a post he has held since August 2010. Previously, he worked as the…
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Georges Bizet’s Carmen at Seattle Opera Saturday, October 29, 2011 at 3:00pm – Reception with Ms. Walewska Following successful performances in Don Quixote, Bluebeard’s Castle and Il trovatore, the Polish mezzo-soprano Małgorzata Walewska is returning to Seattle Opera. This season, Miss Walewska will portray the thrilling but dangerous, seductive and capricious Carmen which has become…
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