We 21 Oct 09
IDFA Film – Our Street
At the request of the IABR, the IDFA - International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam - compiled a special series of film documentaries about the city, which will be shown at the Biennale. On 21 and 25 October: Our Street by Marcin Latallo.
Our Street – Cinema Version (2008, 80 min)
Director: Marcin Latallo
The long-unemployed Marek looks on as the textile factory where he and his family worked for for five generations gets converted into a high-end mall.
At the end of the 19th century, the Polish city of Lodz was the textile capital of the world. The city was even referred to as The Promised Land. More than a hundred years later, not much of that is left. After the fall of Communism, the factories were closed and the workers fired. Marek Furmanczyk is one of them. For five generations, his family worked in the big textile factory on Ogrodowa Street. Marek still lives across the street, but he has been unemployed for 12 years now. In his words, "I'm a ruin, just like this factory." Documentary filmmaker Marcin Latallo followed Marek and his family over the course of five years. French real estate developers have been working on converting the run-down factory buildings into Manufaktura: the biggest mall and recreational centre in all of Europe. But will Marek be able to find a job there? The family is vigilantly observant of the developments going on in the factory across the road, and they watch it all from the windows of their tiny apartment. As the piles are hastily driven into the ground and the contours of the new mall and the new Europe become more and more visible, the family gradually falls apart. Grandma does her best to hold it all together, but Marek can only find consolation in alcohol.
+31 10 4401342
The Hood, NAI - 3:00 pm
Also on Sunday 25 October at 12 noon
entrance with day ticket/PP
