A Travelogue
Dir. Anna Baumgart / Poland / 2020 / 10’
Section:
Travelogues
Director: Anna Baumgart
Screenplay: Małgorzata Radkiewicz
Cinematography: Szymon Kluz
Editing: Grzegorz Pacek
Sound: Marcin Popławski
Costume Design: Marta Szypulska
Starring: Klara Bielawka, Anna Kłos
Producer: Anna Baumgart
Production: Grzegorz Pacek
World sales: Anna Baumgart
Language: Polish
CREDITS
DESCRIPTION
“A Travelogue” documents the experience of migration of the female body and an object – a photographic camera. The video is a portrait of Mieczysława Nogajewska, a photographer and owner of the famous “Foto-Elite” photographic studio in Gdynia in the 1930s. After the start of World War II, Nogajewska lost her wealth and started her travel across Poland, for which she took her only camera. The camera was her best companion; a lens that allowed her to focus on her surroundings; a language, thanks to which she was able to tell her stories; a journal. In Anna Baumgart’s video, the camera becomes an equal, a protagonist just as important as the photographer. The heavy body of the camera is directly attached to the photographer’s physique, becoming virtually a single body, joined together in dialogue. In the strangely realistic world of the video, the camera’s voice is heard as distinctly as the women’s narrative. Listening to the monologue/dialogue, we are guided by the protagonist(s) journey through a dry and deserted landscape. Nogajewska-camera are stalled in the sand – their journey is strenuous, there’s a double weight that weighs on the photographer’s back and the camera’s tripod. In her video, Baumgart merges a new materialist approach with a feminist perspective, to later on move into object-oriented ontology: the story of a migrating female body is a thorough observation of an entangled existence of Nogajewska and the non-human object. (Bogna Stefańska)
FESTIVALS AND AWARDS
Millennium Docs Against Gravity
DIRECTOR
Anna Baumgart
Post-conceptual artist, director and set designer. Doctor of Arts. Multiple scholarship holder of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Her film, performative and sculptural works have been presented at many exhibitions, i.a. at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Jewish Museum in New York, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein in Berlin, KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Museum on the Seam in Jerusalem, Casino Luxembourg in Luxembourg, CCA in Moscow, Riga, Tallinn, Zachęta National Gallery of Art and the Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, the National Museum in Warsaw and at video art and film festivals, such as Videobrasil in São Paulo, Videonale in Bonn, Monstrainvideo in Milano, European Media Art Festival Osnabrück, New Horizons IFF, WATCH DOCS IFF. The project "Conquerors of the Sun" (“Zdobywcy Słońca”, 2012) was invited to Manifesta 10, but due to Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the artist rejected the invitation in protest. The film "Fresh Cherries" (“Świeże wiśnie”, 2010) received the Audience Award for Best Video at the Loop Festival in Barcelona. Anna Baumgart’s works are in numerous Polish and international collections, including Hauser & Wirth, FRAC Poitou-Charentes, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Upper Silesian Museum in Bytom, European Parliament in Strasbourg, National Museum in Warsaw, NOMUS New Art Museum in Gdansk, Arsenal Gallery in Bialystok. In the years 2000–2006 she ran the Baumgart café at the Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art, which was an artistic and activist project and an important place on the cultural map of Warsaw.
IMAGES GALLERY
