From World War II to American Avant-Garde: How Did Eastern European Experiences Shape “New American Cinema”?

The so-called “godfather of American avant-garde cinema”, Jonas Mekas, spent the last year of World War II in a German labour camp. A few decades later the Lithuanian filmmaker became best known for his film diaries — personal and poetic movies, e.g. Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972). The intimate style of cinema was the crucial feature of not only Mekas’  films but most of the New American Cinema. “The First Statement of the New American Cinema Group” from 1962 began with a clear declaration: “We believe that cinema is indivisibly a personal expression”. However, American avant-garde might have looked completely different if it had not been for the conflict between Jonas Mekas and Edouard de Laurot in the early 1960s.

Edward de Laurot, born as Edward Laudański in Warsaw, Poland, also emigrated to the US after World War II. In the 1950s he met Mekas with whom he became a very close friend for a while. But the two Eastern European friends were like night and day. While Mekas had lost his faith in universal values, de Laurot still believed in them and attempted to rehabilitate European ideologies, like Marxism or Existentialism, in his own visionary manner. The dispute between Mekas and de Laurot shows a significant rift within the generation that experienced World War II. A reconstruction of this dispute will also serve as an opportunity to bring out of the shadow the forgotten biography of Edouard de Laurot, including the time when he studied and worked in Paris.

The Polish Academy of Sciences Scientific Centre in Paris invites you to the lecture From World War II to American Avant-Garde: How Did Eastern European Experiences Shape “New American Cinema”?, which will be led by Łukasz Kiełpiński (Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw) – a PhD candidate at the Doctoral School of Humanities at the University of Warsaw, specializing in the beginnings of autobiographical film practices in the 20th century. Łukasz Kiełpiński has conducted research at the University of Toronto and at the IWM in Vienna, and has published in “Kwartalnik Filmowy” and “Kultura współczesna”. He is a fellow of the NCN grant “Odmieńcy. Performanse inności w polskiej kulturze transformacji” and a recipient of the Polish  Minister of Science and Higher Education Scholarship. He has won several awards, including first place in the Ewelina Nurczyńska-Fidelska Competition and an honorable mention in the Krzysztof Mętrak Competition.

The event is organized as part of the “Meetings with Science” project, a series of popular science lectures organized by the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Polish Academy of Sciences Scientific Centre in Paris since 2024. The aim of the project is to promote the achievements of Polish scientists in France, and it is aimed at everyone interested, regardless of their level of knowledge on the topics discussed.

Due to the limited number of places, those interested in attending the lecture are invited to register by sending an email to secretariat@paris.pan.pl or by filling out the form: https://forms.office.com/e/MQCPLZVPR2

The event will be held in a stationary form, in English.