NEWSLETTER
The series includes his latest film The Balcony Movie, which had its New York premiere at MoMI as closing night of its 2022 First Look Festival
December 2–4, 2022
Astoria, New York, November 14, 2022 — Museum of the Moving Image will present a weekend-long, career-spanning retrospective December 2–4 showcasing eight of Polish director Paweł Łoziński’s nonfiction films, ranging from one of his earliest to his most recent, The Balcony Movie, with the filmmaker in person for all screenings. In addition to Łoziński’s own films, the series will include Father and Son (2013), his fascinating collaboration with his father, the Oscar-nominated Polish master Marcel Łoziński, as well as his father’s How It’s Done (2006). The program is co-presented with the Polish Cultural Institute in New York.
MoMI Curator of Film Eric Hynes notes: “Paweł Łoziński’s nonfiction films don’t merely observe; they lean forward, they inquire, they connect. Often it’s the director doing the asking and connecting, whether it’s with his Warsaw neighbors or his own father, Marcel Łoziński. At other times there are proxies, as with the incisive therapist in You Have No Idea How Much I Love You, or subjects leading one another down revealing pathways of conversation in Chemo and Birthplace. These engagements, inquiries, and seemingly casual encounters are energized by the filmmaker’s formal rigor: defining compositional frameworks, adherence to conscribed locations, set durational parameters. Yet these films are anything but clinical or predetermined. His practice assumes limitations and imperfections that can be accepted, fought, or worked around—like how one might (and probably ought to) approach other humans, and much like how Łoziński himself treats the people in his films.”
The Balcony Movie both exemplifies and distills his methods and tendencies after 30 years of filmmaking. Curious about the people who passed below his balcony in Warsaw, and intrigued by how a camera might encourage connections, he spent a year filming his encounters with neighbors and strangers. He’s not a voyeur, nor is he a street reporter with an agenda—he calls out to them, hoping they’ll stop and respond and share something about themselves. He never ventures beyond the balcony, which serves as both a barrier and catalyst for deeper connections. The film won the Grand Prix–Semaine de la Critique at the 2021 Locarno Film Festival and received its New York premiere as the closing night selection of MoMI’s First Look Festival earlier this year. The Balcony Movie is Academy Award–eligible in the feature documentary category.
The full schedule for In the Neighborhood: The Films of Paweł Łoziński is included below and posted online at movingimage.us/series/pawel-lozinski. Tickets are $15 with discounts for seniors, students, youth, and MoMI members.
‘IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: THE FILMS OF PAWEŁ ŁOZIŃSKI,’ DEC. 2–4, 2022
Screenings take place in the Sumner M. Redstone Theater or the Celeste and Armand Bartos Screening Room at Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35 Ave, Astoria, NY. Advance tickets are available online at movingimage.us.
Paweł Łoziński is scheduled to appear at all screenings. All films are in Polish with English subtitles unless noted otherwise.
The Balcony Movie
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2, 6:30 P.M.
Dir. Paweł Łoziński. 2021, 100 mins. Filmed before the pandemic yet prescient about our collective craving for connection in isolation, Paweł Lozinski’s quietly revelatory documentary was shot entirely from his balcony in Warsaw. Elevated from the street and armed with just his camera and boom mic, Łoziński engages strangers and friends, old couples and young mothers, commuting workers and ex-convicts, in philosophical queries that evolve, over many months, into confessions, course corrections, and complicated relations, offering a cumulative portrait of the struggles and moods of the times while exemplifying the humanist curiosity and formalist rigor of the unseen director behind the camera.
Birthplace + Sisters
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1:00 P.M.
Birthplace. Dir. Paweł Łoziński. 1992, 47 mins. Łoziński’s first major work follows Henryk Greenberg, a Polish-born American who lost much of his family in the Holocaust, as he returns to the village of his childhood. Visiting locations where his father and younger brother were seized and subsequently murdered, Greenberg encounters former neighbors who claim to have little memory of what transpired. But soon their recollections come more easily. Preceded by Sisters. Dir. Paweł Łoziński. 1999, 12 mins. Łoziński’s celebrated, delicate study of familial love centers on a single walk made by two elderly sisters inside their city-block’s courtyard. From envy to the need for control, Sisters celebrates love and companionship while remaining attentive to its pains.
The Way It Is + The Ukrainian Cleaning Lady
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2:30 P.M.
The Way It Is. Dir. Paweł Łoziński. 1999, 58 mins. In and around his own apartment in Warsaw, Łoziński explores a year in the lives of his neighbors, particularly Wiesio, a former caretaker who lives in a makeshift hovel next to the garbage disposal. He lives off a disability pension and makes ends meet by digging through the neighborhood disposals. Respectfully attentive and crafted with both affection and honesty, the film is an aching portrait of loneliness and of lives too often rendered invisible by changing times. Preceded by: The Ukrainian Cleaning Lady (Dir. Paweł Łoziński. 2002, 20 mins.) This is an intimate portrait of the filmmaker’s own cleaning lady, a single mother who left her native Ukraine seeking a better life. She labors, sings, takes Polish lessons from Łoziński, for whom she consents to be filmed, radiating good humor, endurance, and unguarded melancholy.
How It’s Done
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 4:15 P.M.
Dir. Marcel Łoziński. 2006, 90 mins. Piotr Tymochowicz, a media advisor to some of Poland’s top politicians, thinks that anybody can be molded into a charismatic leader. To prove it, he puts out a call for neophyte applicants for political candidacy, and hundreds apply. He selects a small group for training, which Polish master filmmaker Łoziński follows for three years. The result is a dynamic, entertaining, and implicitly damning snapshot of opportunistic, all-too-familiar reductive populism in action.
Chemo
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1:00 P.M.
Dir. Paweł Łoziński. 2009, 58 mins. Through a series of close-ups that anticipate his 2016 film You Have No Idea How Much I Love You, Łoziński captures patients in an oncology clinic where they receive chemotherapy. The context and location engender profound reflections and wide-ranging conversation, each frame teeming with life, light, and humor.
Father and Son
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2:30 P.M.
Dir. Paweł Łoziński. 2013, 56 mins. Two acclaimed documentary filmmakers, Marcel and Paweł Łoziński, go on a road trip from Warsaw to Paris. For the father it’s a journey into the past, between two home cities; for the son it’s an attempt at connection, a critical review of their often difficult relationship. What had been planned as their first-ever collaborative film—both wield cameras during the trip—fell apart in the edit, resulting in two separate films utilizing the same footage. This searching, forgiving, and entertaining dual portrait is Paweł’s version.
You Have No Idea How Much I Love You
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4, 4:00 P.M.
Dir. Paweł Łoziński. 2016, 80 mins. Łoziński’s unwaveringly intimate work documents a triangular psychotherapeutic encounter between a daughter, Hania; a mother, Ewa; and a therapist, Bogdan. Focused on one face at a time, mining every utterance for revelation, and every expression for what lurks behind the words, Łoziński witnesses resistance and progress, trauma and enduring love.
# # #
Top image: The Balcony Movie / courtesy of Łoziński Productions
Press contacts:
Caitlin Hughes, for interviews with Paweł Łoziński, caitlin@caitlinhughespr.com
Tomoko Kawamoto, MoMI, tkawamoto@movingimage.us or 718 777 6830
Sunshine Sachs for MoMI, momi@sunshinesachs.com
PRESS IMAGES ARE AVAILABLE HERE.
MUSEUM INFORMATION
Hours: Thursday, 2:00–6:00 p.m. Friday, 2:00–8:00 p.m. Saturday–Sunday, 12:00–6:00 p.m.
General Museum Admission: $20 adults, $12 senior citizens (ages 65+) and students (ages 18+) with ID, $10 youth (ages 3–17). Children under 3 and Museum members are admitted free. General admission is free every Thursday, 2:00–6:00 p.m.
Address: 36-01 35 Avenue (at 37 Street), Astoria (Queens), NY, 11106
Subway: M (weekdays only) or R to Steinway Street. W (weekdays only) or N to 36 Ave.
Program Information: Telephone: 718 777 6888; Website: movingimage.us
Membership: movingimage.us/join-and-support/become-a-member or 718 777 6877
Film Screenings: Friday evenings, Saturdays and Sundays, and as scheduled. Unless noted, tickets are $15 adults / $11 students and seniors / $9 youth (ages 3–17) / free or discounted for Museum members. Advance online purchase is recommended.
Face masks (ages 2+) are recommended inside the building and during screenings. Please review all visitor safety guidelines here.
Follow the Museum on Facebook (@MovingImageMuseum), Twitter (@movingimagenyc), and Instagram (@movingimagenyc).
Museum of the Moving Image is housed in a building owned by the City of New York and has received significant support from the following public agencies: New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; New York City Council; New York City Economic Development Corporation; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; Institute of Museum and Library Services; National Endowment for the Humanities; National Endowment for the Arts; and Natural Heritage Trust (administered by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation). For more information, please visit movingimage.us.