To celebrate the 35th anniversary of establishing diplomatic relations between Poland and the Republic of Korea, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute has prepared a programme that aims at popularising Polish culture. This event offers a chance to present to Korean public Polish artists from such fields of art as classical music, jazz, folk, visual arts, film and animation. A review of the Polish animation and video art will take place this year in the Republic of Korea. It will be hosted by the prestigious National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) – the most important institution for promoting contemporary and modern art in Seoul. The films will be presented between 6 December 2024 and 11 January 2025. The review will include productions that emerged at the crossroads of two disciplines – film and visual arts, starting from the 1930s to the present day. Screenings will be supplemented by curators’ comments, live lectures and meetings with the artists. Karol Szafraniec and Łukasz Ronduda are curators of the review.

“Art of the Moving Image: Polish Animation and Film Avant-Garde” in Seoul

The review is a comprehensive attempt at summing up certain tendencies in Polish audiovisual culture that have appeared over the last 100 years, which has never been presented in South Korea in such form and scale before.  Divided into three phases, the review will present works of art, persons and art trends that serve as evidence for the emergence of different experimental and avant-garde elements within the range of creative actions focused around film – both those linked to the world of cinema and those belonging to the world of visual arts. Relations and interactions between these genres are interesting especially in the context of post-war Poland and cultural, social and political changes taking place at that time.

The review will also present full-length films that in recent years have merged cinema with the art world in various ways. “Photon” is an authorial transfer of individual artistic practices of Normal Leto into the convention of a feature cinema. “A Heart of Love”, the protagonist of which is Wojciech Bąkowski (or his avatar, played by Jacek Poniedziałek), is of a similar nature, at the same time being an attempt to combine theoretical reflection and curatorial activities with the substance of a feature melodrama embedded in the convention of a sci-fi dystopia. “Solaris, Mon Amour” is a documentary essay of a found footage type created by Kuba Mikurda, and at the same time an experimental narrative about Stanisław Lem, about mourning and getting through it, made out of scraps of films found at the Film Studio.

Richness, diversity and coherence of Polish artistic activities involving moving pictures

The review’s curators – Karol Szafraniec and Łukasz Ronduda – wish to present the richness, diversity and coherence of Polish artistic activities involving moving pictures. By presenting Polish art in such a form, they not only want to arouse interest in it, but also demonstrate its still inspiring potential.

The films will be presented in five blocks:

• Avant-garde animation and formal experiments (6-7 December 2024);
• Art goes to cinema / Art is a woman (13-14 December 2024);
• Feature movies (20-21 December 2024);
• Between art and film these days (3-4 January 2025);
• Between art and film these days (10-11 January 2025).

Screenings will be supplemented by curators’ comments and meetings with such artists as, among others, Izabela Plucińska and Joanna Rajkowska.

The final screening will complete the cultural programme of AMI in the Republic of Korea.