TRANSGRESSIVE IDENTITY and EU Migration in Polish and Central European Cinema

A lecture by

Professor Małgorzata Radkiewicz (Jagiellonian University, Poland)

Venue:
4th floor Masaryk Senior Common Room
UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies
16 Taviton Street, London WC1H 0BW

Registration:

About the event:

Visual material: feature films and documents – Polish and Central European.

Key words: identity, culture, gender, globalisation, nomadism, post-modernism, post-communism, colonial/ postcolonial studies.

There are in fact only several films in Poland and other countries that address the issue of “EUmigration”, which is the term I created to discuss both: migration/ emigration and the social dynamic of The European Union. After joining the EU in 2004, Poland became part of a new socio-political, cultural and economical structure. For hundred thousands of people (of different age, class, gender, education and backgrounds) it was a promising moment to start “a new life”. The process of massive migration started and it has been continuing permanently.

One can analyze the complexity of the process form many different perspectives, including social, cultural one. In my lecture I decided to focus on the category of identity, which I call “transgressive identity”, following concepts of Zygmunt Bauman, Rossi Braidotti and Stuart Hall. I would like to analyze selected visual materials that illustrate the process of EUmigration and its consequences, and then to interpret particular narrations and images using theoretical texts, that try to define particular ideas (of postmodernism, nomadic identity, etc.), using such terms as: transgression, globalisation, multi- and intercultural societies, post-colonialism, post-communism, feminism, queer and others. However, the crucial category for me is transgressive identity and its representations in contemporary cinema, which can be examined in terms of gender, nationality, race, ethnicity and others.

Considering the complex issue of identity, it is important to see it as a dynamic process of creativity that is based on:

– diversity and differentiation,

– variations and dissimilarities

-and, as Rosi Braidotti argues, “intensive and often intransitive transitions”.

Malgorzata Radkiewicz, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Audio Visual Arts at the University of Krakow. Her research interests and publications focus on gender representation in film and media as well as on much wider category of cultural identity She published a book about women filmmakers, and other on Polish cinema of 1990s. In her last book: “Female Gaze: Film Theory and Practice of Women directors and artists” she addresses the issue of women’s cinema and arts in terms of feminist theory.