27 min, DCP, 16:9
Polish
The theatrical performance Story of a Scared State took place in Wólka Kosowska, the largest center of wholesale trade in Central and Eastern Europe, founded by Chinese businessmen in the early 1990s. The warehouses, located near Warsaw, serve as breeding grounds for an investigation into the exercise of power. Representatives of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews need to negotiate the urgent shipment of a memorial to the famous Polish Second World War resistance movement fighter Jan Karski with a Chinese-owned art production company. From the purpose of art to dead national heroes, Story of a Scared State unfolds on an awkward, Brechtian battlefield where the politically correct does not lie where we expect to find it.
The documentation of the event was directed and filmed as a sitcom.
The Pleated Skirt of Identity an essay by Jan Sowa, about the performance Story of A Scared State for the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
Actors: Joanna Drozda Konrad, Marcin Czarnik, Yang, Piotr Wang, Van Pham and Kim Lee (as Lee)
Assistant director: Kuba Mikurda
Script: Assaf Gruber and Kuba Mikurda
Cinematographer: Paweł Nowik
Editing: Sławomir Jankowski and Assaf Gruber
Sound recording: Igor Kłaczyński
Sound mixing: Igor Kłaczyński
Sound engineer at the performance: Łukasz Cieślak
Stage design: Assaf Gruber and Modelatornia
Graphic design: Kuba de Barbaro
The project was produced in collaboration with the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in the framework of the artist-in-residence programme of 2016.