Why look at pigs
Discussion after the screening of Gunda
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Why look at pigs – discussion after the screening of Gunda
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We invite you to a special screening of the film Gunda by Viktor Kossakovsky and a discussion with specialists in critical animal studies: Dariusz Gryza, Dorota Łagocka and Michał Matuszewski.
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- We will try to look at Gunda carefully, appreciating the great importance of this film for the promotion of animal rights and its formal innovation. We also want to take a critical look at the way Kossakovsky builds his message and dismantle certain film and mental clichés. We will look at Gunda from the perspective of cinema theory, art history, contemporary philosophy, but also activism.
- The eponymous pig, Gunda, lives on a farm and has just become a mother to a litter of piglets. Kossakovsky’s camera closely observes their first weeks: clumsy climbs up their mother’s body to reach the milk-filled teat, scuffles at breakfast and joyful mud baths. The camera is set on the animals’ eye level, allowing us to experience the perspective of the piglets and the sow, and sometimes of cows and chickens also filmed by Kossakovsky. A one-legged rooster looking longingly outside the yard fence, a sluggish piglet who is always behind, a young cow smelling the leaves of a young birch – each of the beings has its character and personality, as well as a fascinating story. A beautifully filmed, black-and-white Gunda is an intimate encounter with creatures living right next to us.
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Dariusz Gzyra – philosopher, writer, lecturer, social activist. Author of the book Dziękuję za świńskie oczy. Jak krzywdzimy zwierzęta [Thank you for pig eyes. How we hurt animals] (Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej 2018). Member of the Polish Ethical Society. He teaches at the Artes Liberales Faculty of the University of Warsaw at the anthrozoology course and at the animal rights postgraduate studies at the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities. Editor of the animal rights ethics section of the journal Zoophilologica. Polish Journal of Animal Studies.
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dr Dorota Łagodzka (PhD) – art historian, culture expert, assistant professor at the Faculty of Artes Liberales, University of Warsaw, co-author and coordinator of the anthrozoology course. Author of numerous publications on cultural animal studies and contemporary art, occasional curator of exhibitions and art critic. She carried out two projects of the National Science Centre: on cultural studies of animals and animals in art.
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Michał Matuszewski – curator of the film programme at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art. Organizer and curator of many reviews and retrospectives of artistic and experimental cinema. He has published in magazines (Ekrany, Pleograf, Kwartalnik Filmowy) and collective books (Cięcie ciał [Cutting bodies], Nowa Kinofilia [New cinephilia]). He studied Polish philology. Jury member at international festivals, including Cannes, Berlin, Venice and Oberhausen. He is interested in new media and VR, especially their institutional aspect and the non-human perspective in film. Culture & Animals Foundation scholarship fellow. He is working on a visual research project about animals in films.
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- The co-author of the idea of the event is the Animal Studies Scientific Circle operating at the Artes Liberales Faculty of the University of Warsaw.
