The Borderland Foundation’s work involves an artistic rediscovering of the area's rich multicultural heritage, which had been all but destroyed by two world wars. – Ian Fisher, The New York Times
In just over a decade Mr. Czyzewski has won an international reputation, helping to set up about a dozen similar centres as far afield as Mostar in Bosnia, Uzhgorod in Ukraine and Arad in Romania. – Stefan Wagstyl, The Financial Times
Before multitudes from the Eastern European borderlands emigrated to the Lower East Side around 1900, and before many others perished or were resettled in the hell of WWII, the little town of Sejny in northeast Poland was home to Lithuanians, Poles, Jews, Russian Old-believers, Belarusians, Roma, and Germans. As immigrants, they brought their borderland identity with them to the multicultural experiment of America.
For a long time people had been emigrating from Sejny. Today, this little town is exporting to diversified societies worldwide its
pioneering methods of community work as a laboratory for multiculturalism. The aim of Borderlanders: Finding Their Voice is to
present the ideas and practices of the Sejny-based Borderland Foundation in building bridges between cultures and ethnicities. Multiple identity, exile, immigration, and the arts’ creative role in multicultural community work are the themes that relate the
festival’s events to each other.
All performance events are presented in the Lower East Side as a tribute to the multicultural heritage of a district that was home to many Eastern European immigrants in the early 20th century.
BORDERLANDERS: FINDING THEIR VOICE is presented by the Polish Cultural Institute in New York in association with La MaMa E.T.C., Bowery Poetry Club, Millennium Film Workshop, Inc., and the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies, New School for Social Research.
Festival Program:
SEJNY CHRONICLES
American Premiere at La MaMa E.T.C.
April 10-20, 2008
CAFÉ EUROPA
An Evening of Arts and Letters on the Theme of "Borderlanders"
The Bowery Poetry Club
April 14, 2008
FILMS ABOUT THE BORDERLANDS
Millennium Film Workshop, Inc.
April 9-17, 2008
BETWEEN THE PAST AND THE FUTURE: MEMORY WORK IN THE BORDERLANDS
A Conversation with Krzysztof Czyzewski, president of the Borderland
Foundation
The New School for Social Research
April 16, 2008
The Polish Cultural Institute
BUSINESS ONLINE CATALOG
