Meeting Marquee

24 June 2021

We talk to Julia Lorenc about surprises in the programme, the need for meetings and the voice of women.

Justyna Skalska: What’s coming, what’s missing and what surprises has the 30th Jewish Culture Festival in store for us?

Julia Lorenc: This year’s events will be more scaled down than usual. Of course we will host a few major music events, but most will be much more intimate.

Given the current situation, we won’t be holding the Shalom on Szeroka Street concert, which is usually the climax of the festival. But the Jewish Culture Festival is about far more than Szeroka – we’ll make sure there is no doubt after this year’s edition!

After last year we know how important it is to see people and spend time together, so we are bringing the Jewish Culture Festival Marquee to the corner of Józefa and Wąska streets. The marquee, an instant favourite of our guests, was the perfect solution in the current pandemic reality. It hosts the majority of this year’s events. Every morning kicks off with a Press Meeting with Aga Kozak – a perfect start to the day with our delicious coffee from a finjan. They are followed by lectures, literary meetings, interviews, Seniors’ Workshops and conclude with a film screening, concert or DJ event in the evening. There will also be festival classics such as the Sabbath Breakfast and Classics at Noon. And of course we’ll be maintaining all necessary precautions to ensure the safety of all guests and festival staff.

But surely there are other festival locations…

As well as those familiar to our audience – the Marquee and the Tempel Synagogue – this year we are taking events to venues hosting our festival for the first time. One is the Museum of Municipal Engineering where we’ll hear concerts by Łona and Weber and The Pimps. We’ll also head beyond Kazimierz to the original historic Jewish quarter in Kraków: Collegium Maius presents an incredible audiovisual project inspired by Copernicus and prepared especially for the festival by the ensemble Dark Matter with the Polish artist Erith.

Since there’s no avoiding pandemic restrictions, we decided to think of them as an impulse to change the way we think about the festival rather than seeing them just as limitations. All the more so because we were so keen on meeting people, even if it wasn’t in the literal sense. It is in this context, and by reaching for the leading theme of this year’s events – fire, widely regarded as a driver of human interaction – that the project Kumzits was developed as an experimental collaboration between Berlin, Jerusalem and Kraków. During the festival, our guests will be able to get involved by taking part in artistic projects and urban interventions scattered throughout Kazimierz.

This year’s festival is also unexpectedly revealing a female face. Why this feminine – not just feminist – theme?

As I said earlier, this year’s main theme is fire and its symbolic meaning of gathering around it, so we couldn’t possibly leave out the theme of women. In Jewish traditions, women play an incredibly important role of guarding the “home fire”, although in the contemporary world their role reaches far further. The cycle Sisterhood, prepared with Marta Majchrzak, explores important ideas of being a woman in Jewish culture. We will meet women who stick to traditions while achieving great things on the global scale! We will also explore issues affecting all of us in our daily life.

More instalments of the female face will be revealed in other concerts, lectures and art projects. They include the long-awaited Kantor Concert featuring only women singers for the first time! The project has been prepared by kantors and musicians from all over the globe who have worked with Polish artists to create something special for this year’s festival.

Will the Jewish Culture Festival be available online once again?

Of course! We have created a streaming platform especially for those viewers who cannot attend the festival in person. We will stream events live, and some will also be available after the festival finishes.

To finish, please give us a few of your personal recommendations.

The event I’m most excited about is the concert by the female punk band Jealous which will bring the Marquee down with their energy, and the Kantor Concert which is the culmination of hard work of artists from all over the globe. I can also really recommend the screening of the film Mamboniks, exploring the 1950s craze of Jewish dancers from New York City falling head over heels for the mambo.

This year we have prepared almost 100 events. They’ll be a perfect opportunity to meet new guests, explore Jewish cultural circles and cast a fresh eye on current events. I hope we’ll bring plenty of exciting surprises!

Julia Lorenc – programme manager of Jewish Culture Festival.

Interviewed by Justyna Skalska

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