film screening and discussion
This Feeling
[To uczucie], directed by Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, Poland 2024, 76'
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The most important contemporary documentary about queer Warsaw. While working on his first feature-length film, artist and choreographer Alex Baczyński-Jenkins spent several years capturing a group of his close friends on camera.
- The film features Aaa, Billy, Dawid, Filipka, and Olo, who create, protest, and support one another while facing an environment hostile to queer people.
- This Feeling is a diary of their daily lives. Performances, protests, and ordinary, fleeting moments intertwine with conversations about happiness, sex, and dreams. At times the director simply documents, while at others he co-creates situations filled with intimacy, fun, rebellion, and eroticism. The film captures everything from debuts on the theater stage and in pornographic films to the creation of a language built on new pronouns. In one scene, a praying mantis unexpectedly lands on Filipka's head while she is standing in a garden. The protagonists celebrate this encounter and dance with the mantis. However, their sense of safety evaporates when confronted with a reality where one can be called a "faggot," targeted with firecrackers, and beaten.
- This Feeling is a portrait of a group, a documentary about transformation, intimacy, and performance—about queer life and the courage to find fulfillment.
- Following the screening, we invite you to a Q&A session with the filmmakers.
