Innovative Curatorial Projects – Paris / SingaporeRafael Lewandowski
*1969, Poland. Lives and works in Warsaw, Poland.
Rafael Lewandowski was born in 1969. His mother was French, his father Polish. As a teenager, he directed several amateur super 8 films, before studying film and working as an assistant on numerous productions. In 1996, he received a degree in Directing from La FEMIS. After writing and directing several short films (Journée de fin d'été, Moteur, Un Ranch au Nevada... ) he began working on documentaries: Cela (1996), A shadowed Gaze (1998), Audiences (2000), Enfants de Solidarnosc (2005). While working on these four documentaries exploring the relationship between individual and collective memory, Rafael Lewandowski also made a series of interviews for the Shoah Foundation (created by Steven Spielberg), interviewing hundreds of former deportees, hidden children and partisans from World War II. His films have been selected and awarded prices on international festivals including Cinema du Réel, New Directors/NewFilm at the MoMA, the Warsaw Jewish Film Festival.... and have also been broadcasted on numerous TV channels around the world. He made his first fiction feature film with 2011's The Mole.
Une ombre dans les yeux (A shadowed gaze) / Poland-France / 1998 / 70' / 4:3
A Shadowed Gaze is a documentary portrait of Willy Holt, a film-set designer who achieved fame and notoriety for his work with Woody Allen, Louis Malle, Roman Polanski and many others. For over 50 years he had kept his story a secret. As a member of the French Resistance he was deported to Auschwitz. Upon his return to France, he decided not to talk about his experience as a Holocaust survivor, until now. In this film, Jorge Semprun, Roman Polanski, and the Holt family find the words to tell the story and to pass it on to the next generation. It is a film about how hope and optimism are the keys to survival.