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, established by Chinese entrepreneurs in the early 1990s. The warehouses, located near Warsaw, served as fertile grounds for an investigation into the exercise of power:
Representatives of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews negotiated the urgent shipment of a memorial of the famous Polish Second World War resistance fighter Jan Karski, which had been vandalized and subsequently repaired by a Chinese-owned art production company, situated among other trade businesses in the center. Entirely fictional, directed and filmed as a sitcom, 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 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.