TRANSNATIONAL CINEMA OF AGNIESZKA HOLLAND
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Transnational Cinema of Agnieszka Holland
Research project financed by Norwegian Financial Mechanism 2014-2021, nr 2020/37/K/HS2/02327
The proposed research program aims at examining Agnieszka Holland’s films and television works within three main theoretical frameworks: the concept of authorship in film and media, transnational film and media culture, and global women’s cinema and its correspondence with transnational feminism. These three theoretical frameworks will help to chart a concrete and nuanced approach to Agnieszka Holland’s large and complex body of work. The project's key departure from existing scholarship on Holland resides in its attempt to approach her work from the perspective of transnational women’s cinema. The research project will explore how Holland performs her authorship within various artistic conventions and styles as well as public discourses transmitting specific ideological agendas. Working in a new direction that breaks out of the impasse of using traditional concept of authorship in relation to Holland’s work, the project will examine its alternative modes being constituted by thematic and stylistic dispersion rather than consistency. As the research will demonstrate, her work significantly contributes to transnational feminism and calls for its revisions and re-considerations.
Opening of the exhibition „Faces of Agnieszka Holland” at the Museum of Cinematography, Łódź, 15 November, 2013. Photo by Anna Michalska.
Principal Investigator
Elżbieta Ostrowska, PhD
She obtained her MA from the University of Łódź in Cultural Studies. In 1988-2004 – an assistant profesor in Department of Media and Audiovisual Culture UŁ. In 2005-2021 – Lecturer and Associate Lecturer in Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta, Canada. She had fellowships at the Jagiellonian University (Cracow, Poland), University of Reading (UK), and University of Sussex (Brighton, UK), University of Pittsburgh (US). Taught cinema at the University of Oxford, and University of Princeton. She published among others: The Cinematic Bodies of Eastern Europe and Russia (co-edited with Ewa Mazierska and Matilda Mroz, Edinburgh University Press 2016), Women in Polish Cinema (co-authored with Ewa Mazierska, Berghahn Books, 2006), The Cinema of Roman Polanski: Dark Spaces of the World (co-edited with John Orr, Wallflower Press 2006), The Cinema of Andrzej Wajda: The Art of Irony and Defiance (co-edited with John Orr, Wallflower Press, 2003), Przestrzeń filmowa (Rabid, 2000). She also published in Slavic Review, Studies in European Cinema, Studies in Eastern European CinemaHolocaust and Genocide Studies, and Feminist Encounters.
Elżbieta Ostrowska’s publication on Agnieszka Holland (prior to the project’s implementation):
- “Agnieszka Holland’s Transnational Nomadism”, [in:] Polish Cinema in the International Context, ed. Michael Goddard, Ewa Mazierska, Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2014.
- “I will wash it out”: Holocaust Reconciliation in Agnieszka Holland’s 2011 Film In Darkness, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 2015, vol. 29, nr 1, pp. 57-75.
- “Kto polubi Mary Lennox? Tajemniczy ogród Agnieszki Holland i współczesne kino familijne, Kwartalnik Filmowy, 2015, nr 81, pp. 52-68.
- “Dziedziczka Williama Wylera i Plac Waszyngtona Agnieszki Holland - powtórzenia i innowacje”, [in:] Adaptacje literatury amerykańskiej, ed. Rafał Syska, Kraków: Ekrany 2011, pp. 71-86.
- “Agnieszka Holland – a Sceptic”, [in:] Ewa Mazierska, Elżbieta Ostrowska, Women in Polish Cinema, Oxford, New York: Berghahn Press, 2006.
Co-Investigator
Jarosław Grzechowiak, MA
Film scholar and historian of Polish film. Graduate of cultural studies (specialization: film and media studies) at the University of Lodz and sociology (specialization: Integrated Communication - Advertising, Public Relations, Branding) at Collegium Civitas. PhD student at the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the University of Lodz, employee of the National Film Archive. Co-author of publications on the history of Polish film - including Musi zostać rysa. Przewodnik po twórczości Janusza Morgensterna (2012), Kultura filmowa współczesnej Łodzi (2016), Polsko-czeskie i polsko-słowackie kontakty filmowe (2018), as well as articles published in "Kino" and "Kwartalnik Filmowy". Contractor in the National Centre Science grant Film Distribution in People's Republic of Poland. Manager of the scientific grant PRELUDIUM The cinema of Polish "party units" in 1977-1991.
Implementation and dissemination of the project:
1. Presentation of the project and its discussion at the meeting of the Polish Society for Film and Media Studies, February 17, 2021;
2. The project’s opening event: presentation of the project at the Department of Film and Audiovisual Media UŁ seminar, December 15, 2021; target group: academics; 24 participants.
The project presentation file can be found here: PRESENTATION
3. 01-03.12.2021 – “To Kill a Priest: “Righteous Anger” in Spoor (2017) by Agnieszka Holland”, 52ndAnnual ASEEES Convention, December 1-3, 2021, New Orleans, Virtual Sessions
4. Introductory lecture on Agnieszka Holland’s work for her film Mr Jones presented as a part of the project Open Łódź at the Marek Edelman Dialogue Centre.
An introductory lecture on Agnieszka Holland’s film Mr Jones presented at the Open Łódź special event at the Marek Edelman Dialogue Centre, Łódź – January 26, 2022
5. „Duma i uprzedzenie – krytyczne dyslokacje filmu «Zabić księdza» Agnieszki Holland”, Kwartalnik Filmowy, (116), pp. 146-170. doi: 10.36744/kf.918.https://czasopisma.ispan.pl/index.php/kf/article/view/918; the article is also available at the the University of Lodz Repository (RUŁ), URI http://hdl.handle.net/11089/42630
6. Participation in the online discussion on the articles published in the 116 issue of Kwartalnik Filmowy, March 7, 2022.
Online discussion on the articles published in the 116 issue of Kwartalnik Filmowy (including the article Duma i uprzedzenie – krytyczne relokacje filmu Agnieszki Holland Zabić księdza”) - March 7, 2022
7. Two online lectures for the primary and secondary school teachers on two adaptations of literary classics by Agnieszka Holland delivered March 8 and 9, 2022, organized by Central Office for Film Education of Children and Youth in Łódź.
8. Two lectures on Agnieszka Holland’s cinema delivered within the inter-departamental course “Contemporary approaches to film and screen studies” for PhD students, University of Łódź, Institute of Contemporary Culture, March 14 and 21, 2022
9. Lecture “(Non)present Agnieszka Holland” delivered at the seminar of research group “Out of Frame”. The Forgotten Actresses and Career Women in Polish Cinema, Jagiellonian University, April 6, 2022.
The seminar of research group “Out of Frame”. The Forgotten Actresses and Career Women in Polish Cinema”, Jagiellonian University, April 6, 2022
10. “Agnieszka Holland in FAMU – towards transnational authorship”. NECS 15th annual conference, Epistemic Media: Archive, Atlas, Network, Bucharest, 21-26 June, 2022.
11. „Agnieszka Holland: performing authorship”. Studies in Eastern European Cinema Online Conference, June 17 2022.
12. Secret Agents, Informers, and Traitors: Agnieszka Holland’s Fever (Gorączka, 1980), Studies in Eastern European Cinema, (2022) DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2022.2125221
13. Paper “Agnieszka Holland’s Angry Harvest (1985): Polish memory of the Holocaust revisited” delivered at the international conference “Totalitarianism in Literature and Film”, Wyższa Szkoła Ekonomiczno-Humanistyczna in Bielsko-Biała, October 1-3, 2022.
14. Paper “Towards recognition of Agnieszka Holland’s contribution to women’s cinema”. International Conference “Doing Women’s Film and Television History VI: Changing Streams and Channels”. 14 – 16 June 2023, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.
15. „Agnieszka Holland: an artist? an activist? an intellectual?” the 4th Convention of the Polish Society for Film and Media Studies, Warsaw, 28-30 June, 2023
16. Introductory lecture to Agnieszka Holland’s Fever (Gorączka, 1980). Museum of Cinematography, Łódź, 5 October 2023.
17. “Transnational perspective on the Holodomor in Agnieszka Holland’s Mr. Jones (2019)”, Genealogies of Memory 2023: Pandemics, famines and industrial disasters of the 20th and 21st centuries, Warsaw, 22-24 November 2023.
18. Closing Event – presentation of the project’s outcomes, Department of Film and Audiovisual Media, University of Łódź, February 23, 2024
The file with the closing presentation of the project can be found here: PRESENTATION2
