E www.brunoschulz.prv.pl

 

 

 

 

A TRIBUTE TO BRUNO SCHULZ

 

 

 

 

 

The Center for Jewish History

November 19th, 2002 at 6:30 PM

The 60th anniversary of the assassination of Bruno Schulz

 

 

 

 

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BOOK LAUNCHING

 

Drohobycz, Drohobycz

By Henryk Grynberg

Penguin Books

 

Regions of the Great Heresy, Bruno Schulz: A Biographical Portrait

By Jerzy Ficowski

W.W. Norton & Co.

 

 

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FILM, WORLD PREMIERE

 

Finding Pictures

by Benjamin Geissler

 

 

 

 
 

 

For Immediate release

The Center for Jewish History

15 West 16th Street, NYC 10011

Program information: 212-294-8314

Reservations:  917-606-8200

PROGRAM & PANEL

 

 

The Center for Jewish History dedicates

A TRIBUTE TO BRUNO SCHULZ

Commemorating the 60th anniversary of the death of Bruno Schulz,

the renowned Polish/Jewish visionary author and painter who was killed in the Holocaust.

        

NOVEMBER 19, 6:30 PM-10:30 PM

THE CENTER FOR JEWISH HISTORY

Reservations: 917-606-8200 Program information: 212-294-8314

 

Presented by: The Center for Jewish History, The Jewish Heritage Project, and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. In association with: Goethe-Institut New York, The Polish Cultural Institute, NY, The Institute for the Humanities at New York University, PEN American Center   

 

PROGRAM

 

6:00 PMVIRTUAL EXHIBIT. The life and visual work of Bruno Schulz with images from the archive of YIVO and the academy of Literature in Warsaw, Poland.

 

6:15 PM VIDEO SCREENING "Street of Crocodiles," an animation by the Quay Brothers.

 

7:00 PMREADING, BOOK PRESENTATION, ROUNDTABLE

Bruno Schulz: His Life, Work, World and Afterlife

Host and Moderator: Alan Adelson. Mr. Adelson is the Executive Director of the Jewish Heritage Project, sponsor of the International Initiative in the Literature of the Holocaust. 

Participants:

Henryk Grynberg, author, "Drohobycz, Drohobycz" (Penguin Books). Henryk Grynberg's writing has been acclaimed throughout Europe where he has been short-listed three times for the Nike Award, Poland's highest literary honor.  His most acclaimed titles include "The Children of Zion," "The Jewish War," and "Memorbuch."

 

Theodosia Robertson, editor and translator, "Regions of the Great Heresy, Bruno Schulz: A Biographical Portrait" (W.W. Norton & Co.)

Lawrence Wechshler, Lawrence Weschler recently resigned after twenty years as a staff writer at the New Yorker to become director of the NY Institute for the Humanities at NYU. His reprotages from Poland have been collected in the anthology "The Passion of Poland".

 

Readings by film and Broadway actress Elzbieta Czyzewska

 

8:30 PM – FILM World Premiere. "Finding Pictures" by Benjamin Geissler. Mr. Geissler is the film maker who discovered Bruno Schulz’s murals and followed their fate from the time of discovery to their sudden disappearance from Drohobycz in one of the most controversial museum acquisitions of recent years. A short talk with the director, Benjamin Geissler will follow.

 

 

 

 

 
For Immediate release

The Center for Jewish History

15 West 16th Street, NYC 10011

Program information: 212-294-8314

Reservations:  917-606-8200

BOOK LAUNCHING

 

 

 

Regions of the Great Heresy

By Jerzy Ficowski

 

Translated and Edited by Theodosia Robertson

 

 

“Bruno Schulz was one of the great writers…[his] verbal art strikes us – stuns, even – with its overload of beauty.” 

-- John Updike

 

In the years since his tragic death in the streets of Drohobycz, the Polish town where he was Born,, Bruno Schulz (1892 – 1942) has been the subject of intense curiosity and speculation. Writers like Cynthia Ozick and Philip Roth have kept the interest in Bruno Schulz alive through their portrayals of the inscrutable author. When Israeli officials removed his artwork from Ukraine in 2001 and transported it to Israel, Schulz became the subject of front-page controversy in newspapers around the world.

 

Now, exactly sixty years since his death, publication of REGIONS OF THE GREAT HERESY is a cause for literary celebration. In it, the Polish poet Jerzy Ficowski, widely regarded as the world’s foremost authority on Schulz, reconstructs the enigmatic life story of this prodigiously gifted man.

 

REGIONS OF THE GREAT HERESY was first published in Polish, as a series of biographical portraits of Bruno Schulz. This complete edition, translated and with a foreword by Theodosia Robertson, is the first American edition of the book. Included are reproductions of many of Schulz’s paintings and personal letters, provided by the Schulz estate. The book also presents information on the fate of the missing novel Messiah.

 

 

Born in 1892 in the small Polish town of Drohobycz, in which he would spend most of his life, Schulz earned his keep teaching art to young students. His short stories and is darkly erotic were first sent out only to his close friends. His talent, however, was soon recognized and his writings began circulating in Polish literary circles and were eventually published, to international acclaim. In his story collections, The Street of Crocodiles and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass Schulz employs a baroque poetic style with a stunning, surrealistic edge, portraying a world torn between the traditions of the shtetl and the harsh realities imposed by modern society. As his fame grew, Schulz struggled to write The Messiah, the novel that was to be his masterwork. The tragic disappearance of this, his final work, which Ficowski discusses in REGIONS OF THE GREAT HERESY in considerable detail has seized the literary imagination of a generation of writers and is still the subject of intense speculation and.

 

 

Schulz, however, did not live to complete his work. The Nazis occupied Poland in the fall of 1939. Schulz was first placed under the protection of a Nazi officer who obliged him to paint fairy tale figures on the walls of his son’s bedroom. Caught in an escalating feud between his protector and another Nazi official, Schulz was shot on November 19th 1942.

 

With unique insight, REGIONS OF THE GREAT HERESY examines Schulz’s extraordinary life and imaginative world. Jerzy Ficowski’s book is a work of invaluable literary heritage.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jerzy Ficowski is one of Poland’s leading poets, essayists, and translators. Renowned for his work in resurrecting the works of Bruno Schulz, Ficowski is also the author of one of the most distinguished histories of the gypsies of Eastern Europe. He lives in Warsaw.

 

Theodosia Robertson is a scholar of Slavic languages and literature who has specialized in Polish literature and culture.  She teaches at the University of Michigan at Flint.

 

Regions of the Great Heresy was developed for publication by the Jewish Heritage Project’s International Initiative in the Literature of the Holocaust.

 

 

 

 

 

For Immediate release

The Center for Jewish History

15 West 16th Street, NYC 10011

Program information: 212-294-8314

Reservations:  917-606-8200

BOOK LAUNCHING

 

 

Drohobycz, Drohobycz

And Other Stories

True Tales from the Holocaust and Life After

 

By Henryk Grynberg

 

 

 

“An attempt to bring to life innumerable Jewish existences lost  in the Shoah. 

 The passion of the author deserves a large readership in many languages and

 countries.” — Czeslaw Milosz

 

“Grynberg is one of the most articulate witnesses to the Holocaust.  His writings

  convey to today’s audience the meaning of these exceptionally dark times as few

  other documents and literary works have managed to do.” 

— Jan T. Gross, author of Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, A Finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critic’s Circle Award.

 

“With every new book Grynberg confirms his original and powerful literary

  talent…  I am truly and profoundly convinced that the publishing of Drohobycz,

  Drohobycz in the U.S. will be a major literary event.”

— Ryszard Kapúsciñski, author of The Shadow of the Sun                                           

 

 

 

For Jewish History month this year, Penguin is proud to publish thirteen stories from preeminent Polish writer, Henryk Grynberg. In DROHOBYCZ, DROHOBYCZ AND OTHER STORIES: True Tales from the Holocaust and Life After (Penguin Paperback Original) Grynberg weaves haunting, authentic tales of the Holocaust, including the riveting title story, which reconstructs the assassination of the celebrated writer and artist Bruno Schulz.  In each of these stories, it is not only the devastation of the Holocaust that resonates so clearly, but also the trauma that endures among its victims and survivors today.  Going beyond individual crime and punishment, Grynberg explores collective guilt and the impunity of the twentieth century’s two most genocidal political systems—Nazi Germany and Stalinist Soviet Union—in a profound investigation of bravery, baseness, and vulnerability.

 

 

 

DROHOBYCZ, DROHOBYCZ

was shortlisted for the NIKE Award,  Poland’s Highest literary prize

 

November 19, 2002

will mark the 60th Anniversary of the assassination of Bruno Schulz

 

DROHOBYCZ, DROHOBYCZ was developed for publications by the Jewish Heritage Project’s  International Initiative in Literature of the Holocaust

 

 

 

About the Author:

 

Henryk Grynberg is the author of twenty-five works of fiction, poetry, essays, and drama, and has been the recipient of many Polish literary prizes. After surviving the Holocaust, he sought refuge in the United States because of Poland’s anti-Semitic campaign and censorship of his writing. He lives in McLean, Virginia.

 

 

 

 

For Immediate release

The Center for Jewish History

15 West 16th Street, NYC 10011

Program information: 212-294-8314

Reservations:  917-606-8200

FILM

 

 

Bilder finden – Finding Pictures

(Germany, 2002, 106 min. color, 35 mm , stereo)

a film by Benjamin Geissler

 

 

 

Synopsis

 

“Poetry happens when short circuits of sense occur between words”—Bruno Schulz

 

Bruno Schulz, the world-renowned writer and painter and a Polish Jew, experienced the terror of German occupation in the Galician city of Drohobycz in 1941-42. He initially survived by painting frescoes for the children of the SS officer Felix Landau, on the walls of the villa they had occupied.

 

Bruno Schulz was shot and killed by the SS on November, 19, 1942. Despite an intensive search after WWII, his frescoes were not found until February 9, 2001 when, the documentary filmmaker Benjamin Geissler discovered the long lost pictures. In May 2001 representatives of the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem removed fragments of these murals from Ukraine, sparking an international controversy.

 

The search for the murals, their discovery, and local reactions to their removal have been meticulously documented on film by Benjamin Geissler. In his film Geissler has also recorded some new testimonies about Bruno Schulz and his last days.

 

“Geissler’s documentary enables viewers to follow the filmmaker through a process of discovery and loss. That controversy continues to swirl around the work of Bruno Schulz is no surprise. His fictional vision as well as his very life were embedded in issues which continue to resonate in a world now all too close to Schulz’s most fearful visions.”—Alan Adelson.

 

 

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:

Benjamin Geissler was born in 1964 in Germany. He began his career as a film and documentary editor   working on films of the caliber of "Broadway Bound" by Neil Simon, "Simple Men" by Hal Hartley, "Bad Lieutenant" by Abel Ferrara. Geissler went on to produce his own documentaries and specializing in long-term research projects. His works include "Vincenzo Floridia or the last  Rose of Noto" (1994), "Time Warp" (1997), and “Finding Pictures” (2002). Geissler lives and works in Hamburg.

 

 

A  Benjamin Geissler Filmproduktion

with financial support by

Filmförderung Hamburg

kulturelle Filmförderungdes Bundes (BKM)

Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung

kulturelle Filmförderungdes Mecklenburg – Vorpommern.

In co-operation with arte / mdr

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