ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: How many markers are there in the streets of Warsaw that indicate where the Ghetto was?
Eric Bednarski is a film writer, director, producer, and archival researcher. Born in Canada, he studied history and filmmaking in North America and Europe. His documentary film work with the National Film Board of Canada has been recognized with a Gemini Award and a Writers Guild of Canada Award nomination, and he was awarded the Decoration of Honour “Meritorious for Polish Culture” by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Bednarski was also twice selected as a Talent at the Berlinale Talent Campus, and has served as a jury member for a POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews international competition for short films, in Warsaw, Poland. His films have been broadcast across the world and have been screened at over 40 international festivals, as well as at the United Nations, the European Parliament, and the State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
His award-winning documentary Warsaw: A City Divided makes use of 8mm footage shot by an amateur from both sides of the Ghetto wall. Bednarski himself discovered this previously unknown film and juxtaposes scenes from it with shots of present-day Warsaw. The film was recently screened in Madrid as part of a series on the New Polish Documentary. (You can watch the short version on YouTube here.)
