Warsaw: A City Divided

In 1941, in German-occupied Warsaw, soon after the creation of the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto by the Nazis, a Polish amateur 8mm camera enthusiast shot a remarkable 10-minute film from both sides of the Ghetto walls. This never before seen footage is woven into Warsaw: A City Divided, acting as a silent witness to the tragedy of the wartime division of the city and the murder of its inhabitants. Read more below.

In 1941, in German-occupied Warsaw, soon after the creation of the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto by the Nazis, a Polish amateur 8mm camera enthusiast shot a remarkable 10-minute film from both sides of the Ghetto walls. This never before seen footage is woven into “Warsaw: A City Divided”, acting as a silent witness to the tragedy of the wartime division of the city and the murder of its inhabitants. In this story of a city, Ghetto survivors and witnesses, who still call Warsaw their home, recount their extraordinary memories, while architects, urban historians, and the Chief Rabbi of Poland examine the chilling Nazi vision for Warsaw. Making use of little-known German documents, “Warsaw: A City Divided” sheds new light on the insidious Nazi process of division and resettlement that culminated in the near total destruction of this once vibrantly multicultural city, and in the death of hundreds of thousands of its inhabitants. At the same time, it shows a thriving modern city still coming to terms with a traumatic period of its history. By interweaving rich material from the past with glimpses of present-day Warsaw, both its human face and its urban fabric, it affirms the importance – and the difficulty of remembering.

Duration: 71 minutes; Languages: English; Polish, English Subtitles

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Director:
Eric Bednarski

Photography:
Jacek Petrycki

Music:
Daniel Bloom

Producer:
Dorota Przylubska

Production Company:
The Mazovia Institute of Culture, The Adam Mickiewicz Institute / Culture.pl, TVP, Pado Studio Film, Eric Bednarski

Distributed by:
LOGTV, LTD

AWARDS

The Best Documentary Award at Ann Arbor Polish Film Festival, Ann Arbor, MI

The winner of the Audience Award of the 17th Warsaw Jewish Film Festival, Warsaw, Poland

The Best Documentary Award at: “EKRAN” Toronto Polish Film Festival, Toronto, Canada

Special Mention Award at the “Cinema with the Soul 2019” Documentary Film Festival, Warsaw, Poland

SCREENINGS

Premiere screening:

Millennium Docs Against Gravity Festival, Warsaw, Poland

Screenings:

Warsaw Jewish Film Festival, Poland

Hamilton Jewish Federation, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Ann Arbor Polish Film Festival, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Polish Film Festival in America, Chicago

Polish Film Festival Los Angeles, USA

“Ekran” Toronto Polish Film Festival

Jewish Film Festival, Jerusalem, Israel

“A Man in Danger” Film Festival,Lodz, Poland

“Kino z dusza” Festival, Warsaw, Poland

Zamość Film Festival, Poland

Jewish Motifs International Jewish Film Festival, Warsaw, Poland

Upcoming screenings:

Chagrin Documentary Film Festival, USA

Lund Architecture Film Festival, Sweden

Urban Eye Film Festival, Bucharest, Romania

Unquiet Ghosts of the Ghetto

Jewish Review of Books, by Rokhl Kafrissen, September 13, 2019

We think of Nazi ghettos as impregnable and inevitable, mile markers along the Third Reich’s march to the Final Solution. What we learn from an important new Holocaust documentary called Warsaw: A City Divided is that the Warsaw Ghetto walls were products of urban planning.

Rare footage of life in Warsaw Ghetto comes back to life in new film
Jewish News, May 23, 2019

Rare footage filmed on both sides of the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto kept in storage for decades has been brought back to life in a new film.

The 10-minute raw footage was shot in 1941 on 8mm film by 30-year-old Polish merchant Alfons Ziolkowski, after he was granted a pass to enter the ghetto.

It was included in the hour-long film Warsaw: A City Divided by Polish-Canadian director Eric Bednarski, which premiered in Warsaw earlier this month.

The raw footage, interspersed with shots of modern-day Warsaw and interviews with experts and survivors, documents the daily horrors of life in the war-time ghetto.

It was kept in storage by Ziolkowski’s family for decades until it was uncovered by Bednarski, who began directing the film 15 years ago.

“We see crowds of people on the street. We see partially destroyed buildings,” Bednarski told AFP.

“We see children smuggling food from the Aryan side, as it was called, to the Jewish side.

“Desperate children who were starving, who were pushing food through a hole in the wall,” he added.

A dying man in the street and children beaten by guards for smuggling food: Rare footage of WWII Warsaw Ghetto documents daily life for those locked inside
Daily Mail, May 22, 2019

The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of its kind in Europe – but the story of its inhabitants has always been told using Nazi footage, until now.

Never-before-seen footage shot by amateur Polish filmmaker Alfons Ziolkowski in 1941 shows what life was like for Jews inside the ghetto – from children smuggling food, to a dying man on the sidewalk, to Nazi guards dishing out beatings.

The 10-minute film is the only known footage of the ghetto that was not recorded by Nazis, and provides an invaluable historical record of the Jewish experience there.

The black-and-white footage of the Jewish quarter is included in a new hour-long film ‘Warsaw: A City Divided’ by Polish-Canadian director Eric Bednarski.

Mr Bednarski said: ‘The film footage many of us have seen from the Warsaw Ghetto was shot in 1942 by a Nazi German propaganda film crew.

‘Their work has been used in literally dozens of documentaries about the Holocaust and the Second World War.

Rare footage of life in Warsaw Jewish ghetto shown in Poland
France24, May 14, 2019

Scenes of starving Jewish children smuggling food, a dead body on the sidewalk, were captured in never-before-seen footage of Warsaw’s wartime ghetto by an amateur fillmmaker in 1941.

For decades, the only available footage of the Warsaw ghetto has been Nazi propaganda films. Now, thanks to the discovery of an amateur film, the public can get another take.

The rare black-and-white footage of the Jewish quarter is included in a new hour-long film “Warsaw: A City Divided” by Polish-Canadian director Eric Bednarski.

Powerful unseen amateur film depicting horrors of the Warsaw Ghetto appears in new documentary
The First News, April 12, 2019

A previously unknown amateur film showing the brutal conditions of life in the Warsaw Ghetto from 1941 is featured in a new documentary about the city.

The film is the first archival material to be discovered that was not filmed by the Germans. This makes the film important because all the previously known film materials from the Warsaw Ghetto were made by Germans for their own propaganda to shows Jews in ways that confirmed German war-time stereotypes.

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