Several years after the war, a strange encounter in the heart of Paris made Zofia Posmysz, a former Auschwitz prisoner, start wondering what it would be like to meet her camp overseer. Posmysz turned her fantasy in a successful radio play in which she explored the unlikelyperspective of an oppressor, a Nazi German concentration camp overseer. The story inspired a prolific young filmmaker Andrzej Munk – a representative of the Polish Film School, a group of filmmakers tackling the experience of war with new unorthodox approaches that collided with all the paradoxes of its traumatic events. Like our show? Sign up for our newsletter! Click here to get the transcript Further reading Zofia Posmysz // bio on Culture.pl Andrzej Munk // bio on Culture.pl The Passenger // film description on Culture.pl The Passenger // book description on Culture.pl “Passenger” Depicts the Holocaust from the Point of View of a Nazi Official // article on NewYorker.com Andrzej Munk's The Passenger // article from Vertigo magazine The ‘Lucky Ship’: Rebellion, Desertion & Love on the MS Batory // article on Culture.pl The MS Batory: Culture.pl Readers Share their Photographs & Memories // article on Culture.pl Female guards in Nazi concentration camps // entry on Wikipedia.org Further watching Zofia Posmysz Talks about The Passenger // video interview on Culture.pl Zofia Posmysz: Memory That Will Save Us // video interview on Culture.pl Behind the Scenes: Zofia Posmysz's The Passenger in Yekaterinburg // video about the recent opera version on Culture.pl Thanks Zofia Posmysz // author, screenwriter and writer for radio and televised theatre performances, reporter and broadcast radio editor. Michał Oleszczyk // film historian and critic, member of the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) Credits Written & produced by Monika Proba Edited by Wojciech Oleksiak & Adam Zulawski Hosted by Nitzan Reisner & Adam Zulawski Scoring & sound design by Wojciech Oleksiak
Get to know Piotr Szkopiak, a London-based film and TV director who’s spent a good portion of his life pondering the nature of his identity. Piotr Szkopiak was born in the United Kingdom but into a Polish family. As he grew up, he learned that his parents and neighbours were all World War II prisoners of war who had escaped the USSR but couldn't go back to Poland after the war ended. His mother told him how she had travelled from the depths of the Soviet Union through Persia and southern Europe to the UK, and how after the war this is the place that she had to learn to call home. But first and foremost, his parents talked to him in Polish, signed him up for a Polish weekend school, and raised him as a person with a double identity: Polish and British. This in-betweenness has been something that strongly influenced his life and he reflects on it all in an interview he gave to Karolina Jackowiak, who on behalf of the Poles in South London organisation, was working on the Local Heroes...
Nicolaus Copernicus, born in 1473, was the orphaned son of a copper merchant in Toruń. Thanks to his bishop uncle, he obtained a first class education at the Kraków Academy and then in Italy, where he became an avid observer of the night sky– even though he was supposed to be preparing for a church career. His day job as a church canon, diplomat and doctor in Frombork – when he wasn't defending castles against the Teutonic Knights – meant that it took him over 30 years to finish his book 'On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres' in which he presented an Earth-shattering new idea – that maybe it wasn't actually at the centre of the universe as everyone believed, but in fact revolved around the Sun. Although it would take another century until Galileo was able to prove Copernicus right inarguably using the later invention of the telescope, Copernicus's book, published in 1543 in Nuremberg, would mark the beginning of a very real revolution in science and our understanding of ...
Vera Chytilová was the most important woman director of the Czechoslovak New Wave – although she remains relatively unknown outside of Central Europe. As the first female student of the prestigious FAMU film school in Prague, she had to fight in order to do things her own way. During the creative explosion of the Czechoslovak New Wave, she made her most well known film ‘Daisies’ (1966) – a surrealist pop-art comedy, about two young women who set their minds on creating humorous destruction around them. The 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of her country stopped Chytilová’s promising career dead in its tracks, but unlike Miloś Forman (‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest’, 1975) and others, she refused to emigrate, despite the huge personal cost. After seven years of professional exile, she was allowed to return to filmmaking in the late 1970s, once again finding critical success. After the privatisation of the Czech film industry in the 1990s, she was one of the first to adapt with ...
Stanisław Lem was a science-fiction writer whose works, abilities and quirky sense of humor convinced Phillip K. Dick that he was too brilliant to exist and must have actually been a committee of people! Indeed his rare gift for blending philosophy with technology and action made him an instantaneously recognisable voice in the European sci-fi world and elevated him to the heights of popularity and critical acclaim. But Lem’s life was far from a textbook success story. Throughout his life, he struggled with traumatic wartime memories, distorted identities, and the communist system. But somehow, he was able to turn all the hardships and obstacles into elements of the incredible universes he created in his novels. In this episode, our hosts Nitzan and Adam will try to unravel some of the most confusing mysteries surrounding Lem: why did he choose to abandon his pre-war identity? How on Earth did he foresee the Internet in the 1960s? Is it true that he learned English from a dictiona...
This year we have more great stories for you! There's going to be a bit of sci-fi, a pinch of socialist realism, a good portion of astronomy, and some old-fashioned moving testimonies from a region that never sleeps! Stay tuned: the first episode drops September 7th! Like our show?Get our newsletter!
Like most Polish jazz musicians, Zbigniew Namysłowski learned the basics of jazz listening to Willis Conover’s “Jazz Hour”. Originally starting his musical career playing piano, cello and trombone, Namysłowski became infatuated with the saxophone after meeting composer Krzysztof Komeda, who happened to be carrying an alto saxophone with him, on a train. During that chance encounter, Namysłowski gave the instrument a try and hasn’t stopped playing the saxophone ever since. His original experiments mixing jazz and folk quickly caught people’s attention and in 1962, Willis Conover himself invited Namysłowski and his band to the US to play at the Newport Jazz Festival. This incredible opportunity marked the eve of Namysłowski’s brilliant international career. Time stamps [01:00]Jazz and communism [02:00]Sopot festivals [04:30]The alto saxophone [06:06]The Voice of America jazz lessons [10:02]The American tour [12:23]Jazz Jamboree [13:40]Folk [17:17]Komeda [18:52]Favorites [23...
Adam Makowicz grew up in a house where a piano was the centre of the home. His mother had long planned for him to become a classical virtuoso, but a meeting with a musician who introduced him to jazz changed this path completely. Adam packed his bags and left for Kraków, where he moved into a jazz nightclub and immediately became part of the city’s jazz scene. It was here where his thorough classical education and incredible talent led him to create his unique virtuoso style, one that merged the technique associated with classical music with the vibrance of jazz. In this episode, this standout Polish jazz pianist talks about freedom, beauty and interpretation in jazz music. Time stamps: [01:06] The centre of our home [02:03] Art Tatum [02:59] Radio [04:40] Rebel [05:09] Under the piano [06:49] Duo with Urszula Dudziak [09:30] John Hammond [11:06] Freedom [13:23] The first polish jazz virtuoso [14:04] Solo [15:10] Beauty [15:58] New York [17:34] Martial Law [19:51] Chopin [22:20] H...
“Polish jazz group - 100$ a night” Displayed on the posters in Michał Urbaniak’s band’s van while playing across Europe in the 60s, this hippy traveling player was soon to become one of the most innovative Polish jazz musicians in history. Though his European career was quickly evolving, the old continent simply didn’t feel like enough. From a very young age, Michał knew at heart that he was a New Yorker, eventually jumping at the first chance he got to move to the world’s jazz capital and signing with the legendary Columbia Records. The rest is history. Time stamps [01:11]The Boys of America [02:29]An Introduction to Miles [03:22]New Yorker at heart [07:52]100$ a night [09:55]The violin [11:23]New York [12:14]Columbia [13:19]Folk [16:16]The impossible deal [19:08]Young talents [19:52]Meeting Miles [23:15]Poetry & jazz [27:22]Young musicians Music from the episode [07:33]Composition:Bengal Artist: Super Constellation Album editions: Super Constellation / Fusion I [14:13]Comp...
It may be hard to believe, but when Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski started playing music, jazz was censored in Poland. As a result of Stalin’s cultural politics that governed what kinds of art and culture could be consumed in the country, anything that may have been associated with western imperialism was formally excluded from public life. However, these rigid policies only made jazz more appealing, leading many young people across the country, like Ptaszyn, to fall in love with it. After Stalin’s death in 1953, Ptaszyn entered the newly re-born jazz scene with a bang and quickly became the epitome of the genre. Not only one of Polish jazz’s most brilliant musicians, Ptaszyn is also seen by many as its voice. For over 50 years he’s hosted “45 Minutes of Jazz” a Polish radio show dedicated to jazz that continues to inspire several new generations of musicians and jazz aficionados. Time stamps [01:11] Outlawed music [03:36] Forbidden love [04:21] Willis Conover [06:53] First jazz even...