Artists on Strike
Screening and Q&A with film director Elena de Varda
Please join us at a special screening of Artists on Strike, a 2019 documentary film directed by Elena de Varda, preceded by an online conversation with the film director led by Piotr Bernatowicz, the director of Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art.
In Poland, the period between 1975 and 1989 saw the flourishing of one of the largest and most powerful opposition drives that paved the way to changing the post-WWII borders of European countries. In 1980, the establishment of Solidarity in 1980 boosted the expansion of this movement even further. Artists who supported the postulates and actions of the various engaged social groups have thus contributed to the deconstruction of the post-Yalta order.
Following the introduction of martial law in 1981 artists joined the strikes en masse, and boycotted galleries and theatres related to the communist government, choosing instead to present their work in private residences or churches. They seem to have played an important part in the process of political transformation and the development of civil society.
The author of the documentary, Elena de Varda, came to Poland from Italy in 1987, on a scholarship to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. In her film, starting with the personal experiences of a young student confronting the reality of communist Poland, we uncover incredible cultural and artistic ferment and upheaval against the prevailing system. In this journey between the past and the present, Elena attempts to uncover traces of solidarity and revolutionary character of that era.
- The event accompanies the exhibition Uncensored: Polish Independent Art of the 1980s.
