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Grandmamauntsistercat

Film still from Zuza Banasińska’s film “Grandmamauntsistercat”. Five nurses wear scrubs and look down at the camera. One of them smiles, whilst the other four, also wearing facemasks, hold both their hands up in front of their chests. A large machine can be seen in the background.
© Educational Film Studio in Łódź, Zuza Banasińska

  • Director

    Zuza Banasińska

  • Netherlands, Poland / 2024
    23 min. / Original version with English subtitles

  • Original language

    Polish

Created from archival materials of the Educational Film Studio in Łódź, the film tells the story of a matriarchal family through the eyes of a child grappling with the reproduction of ideological and representational systems. Originally created as didactic and propagandistic tools in communist Poland, the footage is repurposed as a site of auto-fictional memory, its scientific register shifted toward a treatment of the images themselves as specimens.
The classic Slavic witch figure, Baba Yaga, is reimagined as a prehistoric goddess from the time of matriarchy. This transformation provokes layered reflections on kinship and identity as the child navigates binary gender roles. The women of the family find a home in the archive, engaging in a process of self and world-making that transforms the often sexist and anthropocentric images into tools of freedom and resistance.

Zuza Banasińska is an artist and filmmaker from Warsaw, currently based in Amsterdam. In their essay films and installations, they animate spectral realities sedimented within archives, investigating processes of standardized knowledge production. They studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, at the University of the Arts in Berlin, and at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. Their works have been shown in spaces such as the U-Jazdowski CCA in Warsaw, Dům Umění Mesta Brna in Brno, and Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, among others. Their work is currently supported by the Mondriaan Fund, Netherlands Film Fund, and Stimuleringsfonds, and is distributed by Video Power and EYE Filmmuseum.

Production Zuza Banasińska. Production companies Zuza Banasińska (Amsterdam, Netherlands), Educational Film Studio in Łódź (Łódź, Poland). Director Zuza Banasińska. Screenplay Zuza Banasińska. Editing Zuza Banasińska. Sound design Zuza Banasińska, Constanza Castagnet.

Films: 2018: I didn’t go to Crimea and all I got was this alien message (video installation, 13 min.). 2021: The House that Shadows Built (video installation, 18 min.). 2024: Grandmamauntsistercat.

Bonus Material

  • Film still from Zuza Banasińska’s film “Grandmamauntsistercat”. A young girl with pigtails in a bright red cardigan stands with a crowd of older people. It is unclear what they are observing behind the camera. The image is distorted, creating a noticeably odd and unconventional representation of the girl’s face.

    Trailer

  • Film still from Zuza Banasińska’s film “Grandmamauntsistercat”. A microscopic view of a cell from which something seems to be escaping, against the background of a starry sky.

    Interview

    Zuza Banasińska on the material for the film GRANDMAUNTSISTERCAT

Program Schedule

Funded by:

  • Logo Minister of State for Culture and the Media
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