Zygmunt Bauman was born on November 19, 1925 in Poznań to non-practicing Jewish parents. He has resided in the UK ever since he was driven out of Poland in 1971 by the communist government's anti-Semitic campaign. He is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds (and since 1990 emeritus professor), specialising in the effects of the Holocaust on contemporary society and in post-modern consumerism.
Lawnswood Gardens is a 53-minute film portrait of Bauman, who serves as one of the main representatives of Polish intellectual thought. The main body of the film is based on Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska's brief visit to the Professor's home at Lanswood Gardens in Leeds in the spring of 2010. The film includes archive materials and other interviews, exploring the links between Bauman's Modernity and the Holocaust and Winter in the Morning, a diary from the Warsaw Ghetto written by the Professor's wife Janina Bauman, who passed away in December 2009.
The film also includes a conversation with artist Mirosław Bałka about his How it is exhibition at the Tate Modern and the Professor's response to Bałka's work, providing a sociologist's perspective on art.
The film also features the Professor's friends from Leeds: Anthony Bryant and Griselda Pollock, Aleksandra Jasińska-Kania, Nina Kraśko, Jerzy Wiatr and Vaclav Havel. Bauman's daughter, painter Lydia Bauman, served as the artistic consultant on the film.
The film was realised thanks to the support of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, the National Centre for Culture and ZAiKS.
Paweł Kuczyński (born 1955) - Director. Graduate of philosophy from the University of Warsaw (1975) and directing from the Film School in Łódź (1979, diploma 1991). He moved to the U.S. during the Martial Law period. His most recent films are: Philosopher's Paradise (2004), Light Denied (2008), Phenomenology of Truth" / "Fenomenologia prawdy (2008), Red with Black. Henryk Musialowicz and his art" / "Czerwone z Czarnym (2008), A Missing Self (2010).
Date: July 2, 2011 at 18:00.
Place: Muranów Cinema, ul. Gen. Andersa 1, Warsaw.
Source: press materials