Welcome to CR's Winter 2011-12 Issue!
Happy 2012! And to celebrate both the New Year and the start of CR’s fourth year, we welcome new writers, present you with new books, new stories, and introduce you to some social networking – of the real kind. Read on.
Bogusław Schaeffer: Poland’s Renaissance Man
Pushing the boundaries for the past six decades, Bogusław Schaeffer was still blazing the way at the Edinburgh Fringe last year with “one of the best productions since the festival was launched several dozen years ago.” Magda Romanska profiles a Renaissance man.
Agnieszka Holland talks to Eva Stachniak at the Toronto International Film Festival
The director of In Darkness speaks about films, music, identity, and the challenge of making a complex story simple, but not simplistic.
Hacienda Santa Rosa: a Polish Refuge in Mexico
A harrowing 20-thousand kilometer odyssey ended with an unforgettable welcome in Mexico. Piotr Piwowarczyk, who is making a film about it, tells the story.
Polish Global Village Happy Hour
Polish Happy Hour in DC has a community-building aspect to it but it’s an event without speeches. Co-founder Marcin Zmudzki, who also started the Polish Global Village mailing list, stresses the spontaneity and inclusiveness. Justine Jablonska attended on assignment – but is going back for the sheer pleasure of it.
College graduates look back on their freshman year and know this: Wouldn’t it have been great to have a network right from the start? A spark. An idea, A conversation. Action. A new initiative in Canada’s Hamilton-Toronto area – and it’s spreading.
Chatting with Chicago WTTW's Dan Soles
Are we ready to celebrate Polish-American Heritage Month? Chicago’s PBS station WTTW is. Justine Jablonska speaks to station Chief Television Content Officer Dan Soles and reports on what we can contribute.
Nowhere Places: Mining the Polish Experience
…there’s a symmetry between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the French-
English multicultural country I’ve grown up in… and it seems fitting that Polish and Canadian troops often fought side by side in WWII. That’s a good place to start rebuilding a sense of who I am, says Andrew Borkowski.
Helena Modjeska, a great 19th century Polish actress who came to the US at age 30, learned enough English in six months to play Ophelia, except for the mad scene which was too difficult. So she played that in Polish and wowed them. Aren't all madwomen incoherent anyway? Margaret Araneo reviews Beth Holmgren's great book about the very talented, and very independent, Madame Modjeska.
Be Not Afraid: The Polish (R)evolution, “Solidarity”
Powerful, peaceful and quintessentially Polish: Solidarity. Canadian author Heather Kirk spotlights the many facets of a world-changing revolution that killed “precisely no one.”
Manya, The Living History of Marie Skłodowska Curie
A spellbinding performance by a master storyteller.
Quodlibet with Cardinals and A Letter to Serafin –
By John Minczeski
Introduced by John Guzlowski
- Bogusław Schaeffer honored in chocolate
- Helena Modjeska in chocolate and elsewhere
- A new element named for Copernicus
- Radioactive, a biography of Marie and Pierre Curie, a National Book Award finalist
- Jan Lisiecki, pianist extraordinaire
- Wojtek – the Bear That Went to War is now a documentary film
- Poland’s Prime Minister named European of the Year
