MoMI and the Polish Cultural Institute New York is pleased to partner with the Polish documentary festival Millennium Docs Against Gravity on presenting two selections from their Warsaw showcase Solaris Mon Amour.

Solaris Mon Amour, dir. Kuba Mikurda. Poland. 2023, 47 mins. In Polish with English subtitles. The same year that Alain Resnais’s masterpiece Hiroshima mon amour was released, science fiction writer and theorist Stanisław Lem began writing his influential novel Solaris, an artistic confluence that inspires this wholly original and emotionally resonant found footage film, which underscores the theme of post-traumatic memory that informs both texts. Mikurda, editor Laura Pawela, and composer/sound designer Marcin Lenarczyk bring together clips from 70 films produced by the Educational Film Studio in Lodz in the 1960s, as well as the first radio adaptations of Solaris, to create an entrancing, spectral incantation of loss, mourning, and memory. North American premiere 

Preceded by: 
Handful of Dirt 
Dir. Izabela Zubrycka. 2023, 13 mins. Poland. In Polish with English subtitles. Halina is one of the last funeral singers in Podlasie. Her son Andrzej is a gravedigger. Over the years, they’ve helped thousands of people cross over to the other side, forever bridging life and death, the quotidian with the spiritual, song and silence. North American premiere

Thursday, Mar 14, 2024

The Working on It program offers a lab-like environment for work-in-progress screenings, workshops, and discussions about the artistic process. This year’s edition will take place during the afternoons of March 13–15, and is open to the public.  

12:15 p.m.: Work-in-progress presentation: director Anna Zamecka (Communion, First Look 2018) shares research for her next feature, Słońce (Sun), which follows young Iraqi-Kurds journeying to Belarus. (Redstone) 

1:00 p.m.: Work-in-progress presentation: director Kuba Mikurda (Solaris Mon Amour, First Look 2024) shares inspirations, animations, and other materials for his project Pale Pink, a sci-fi tale of love, loss, and hope. (Redstone) 

This program is a collaboration between MoMI’s First Look Festival and Polish documentary festival Millennium Docs Against Gravity, with MDAG’s Artistic Director Karol Piekarczyk presenting two selections from their Warsaw showcase and engaging in the Working on It sessions.