04/10/2009
Polish-born cinematographer Slawomir Grunberg will give an illustrated lecture on the power of documentary film in shaping a more humane world, on Tuesday, April 21, at SUNY Cortland.
Grunberg, who was named a 1997 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow in Documentary Film Making, will speak of his personal experience and philosophy and use examples from his decades of film making as illustration during the presentation, which will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Brockway Hall Jacobus Lounge.
The program, which commemorates "Yom Ha Shoah" or Holocaust Remembrance Day, is free and open to the public. A brief candle lighting ceremony and reception will follow.
"I believe that most conflicts result from lack of communication between people," said Grunberg, who has previously visited SUNY Cortland to show and discuss his works "Shtetl" and "Jedvabne."
"I would like my camera to show and listen to both sides of the issues," he said. "After all, we need more knowledge and understanding of each other in order to make the world a better place to live."
He first realized the power of the documentary as a student in the Polish Film School.
"My professor and advisor for my short documentary, ‘A Sunday,' threatened me with removing his name from the film credits if I wouldn't make changes and re-edit my film," Grunberg said. "This was Communist Poland, and seeing my film as political, he felt it did not sufficiently follow a party line."
The Communist government banned another documentary he made in Poland, "Anna Proletarian," for more than 10 years.
"This film told the story of a woman, a free trade union organizer, whose firing from Gdansk's shipyard not only started a strike but also gave a birth to the Solidarity movement in Poland and later sparked changes in Eastern Europe and Soviet Union."
He plans to discuss several of his more recent documentaries. These include:
- "Borderline: The People v. Eunice Baker," which was awarded Best Documentary on Disability at the "Picture This ... Film Festival" in Calgary, Canada. The 2005 film tells the story of Eunice Baker, a borderline mentally retarded woman from a poor community in upstate New York who was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for murdering a young child, despite evidence the death was accidental.
- "Fenceline: A Company Town Divided," won in the environmental category at the San Francisco Film Festival. Broadcast on POV/PBS in 2002, the film depicts the struggle of an African-American community in Louisiana's "cancer alley" to be relocated from under the shadow of a Shell oil refinery.
- "School Prayer: A Community at War," was released in 1998 and won a 2000 Emmy Award and was screened at the Leipzig International and the Lincoln Center Human Rights film festivals. In the film, a Mississippi mother of six sues her local school district to remove intercom prayer and Bible classes from the public schools while Christian community members rally against her to protect their time-honored tradition of religious practices in the schools. Both sides claim they are fighting for religious freedom.
- Grunberg's two documentaries dealing with the consequences of nuclear contamination in Russia are the 1994 film "Chelyabinsk: the Most Contaminated Spot on the Planet" and the 1999 film "From Chechnya to Chernobyl." "Chelyabinsk," which Grunberg produced and directed, was awarded the 1996 Grand Prix at the International Nature and Environmental Film Festival in Grenoble, France.
• "Saved by Deportation: An Unknown Odyssey of Polish Jews," was released in 2006 and won the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Washington (D.C.) Jewish Film Festival. This little-known story of survival is a harrowing adventure and an affirmation of human goodness during a time of great darkness.
Born in Lublin, Poland, Grunberg graduated from the Polish Film School in Lodz, where he studied cinematography and directing. Fluent in Polish, Russian and English, he is a veteran documentary producer, director, cameraman and editor. Since emigrating to the U.S. in 1981, he has filmed and produced more than 40 television documentaries.
His independent works, which focus on critical social and political issues, have won international recognition. He photographed and was second unit producer for "Shtetl," the epic Marian Marzynski documentary film that premiered on PBS in 1996 and won a Silver Baton for Excellence in Radio/Television Journalism from duPont-Columbia University and a Grand Prix at the Cinema Du Reel in Paris, France.
A frequent contributor to PBS, Grunberg has directed photography and edited film for "Frontline," "AIDS Quarterly," "American Masters," "NOVA," "Health Quarterly," "Inside Gorbachev's U.S.S.R. with Hendrick Smith" and "People's Century."
The program is sponsored by the Campus Artist and Lecture Series, the Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies and its Jewish Studies Committee. For more information, contact Associate Professor of Psychology Linda Lavine at (607) 753-2040 or at linda.lavine@cortland.edu.