For several years, Łódź has been rediscovering its multicultural roots. It was out of respect for the past that the idea of the
Łódź of Four Cultures festival was born. The traces of the mixture of Polish, Jewish, German and Russian influences are evident in every corner of Łódź, present in the very tissue of the city and the mentality of people, and history - though it seems long gone - is once again becoming an inspiration to talk about the present and the future of the city.
Since 2011, the Łódź of Four Cultures festival has been organized by the
Marek Edelman Dialogue Center, whose mission is to connect different cultures and strengthen mutual respect and dialogue. And is there a better way to show how much we have in common and how mutually enriching this relationship is than through culture: literature, film, theater or music?
With the passing of each generation, Łódź lost the memory of its multicultural identity. Not all of them managed to leave a lasting mark, and today many surviving testimonies seem elusive at a first glance.
This is why we want to form new threads of memory between “us” and “them”.
The main theme of this year’s edition of the Łódź of Four Cultures is
GENERATIONS. We will search the city for places with a fascinating history, such as the so called Pinkus building, which housed the workshop of Samuel Hirszenberg, Polish-Jewish painter in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Former residents of Łódź and their descendants will visit us coming from the far corners of the world, such as Maya Newman, bassist of the Israeli band
Minimal Compact. We will watch films by
Max and Marcel Ophüls, father and son, whose oeuvre is a place of dialogue of Jewish, German, French, American and Russian culture. We will also remind our audiences about other figures whose biographies and works are linked by multiculturalism. One of them is
Joseph Roth, a Polish-speaking Jewish writer, born on the eastern fringe of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, whose first novel, published in a Frankfurt newspaper, was written in Łódź in the interwar times. Artwork by Władysław Strzemiński, Katarzyna Kobro and Alexander Rodchenko will be compared with the works of young Polish artists. We will also see how the arrival of
Russian avant-garde artists affected Łódź of the 1920s.
By juxtaposing different disciplines of art and artists of different generations, we want to make Łódź a multicultural, multinational and multi-generational city once again.
The festival events are open to everyone, regardless of age. We want the word
GENERATIONS to apply not only to the theme of the festival but also its audience.
ŁÓDŹ OF FOUR CULTURES 2012 - GENERATIONS
