Enthusiasm
“One of the year’s most intriguing exhibitions is a set of amateur films produced in Communist Polish factories. Re-presented at the Whitechapel by Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska, the films were bankrolled by soviet bureaucracy, who thought they were funding sturdy propaganda films. In fact, the filmmakers produced poetic, and sometimes epic works that speak of workers’ dreams of happiness, love and freedom.” The best and brightest 2005 by Niru Ratnam for Observer Magazine.
Films of love, longing and labour: At the invitation of the Whitechapel Gallery and the artists, we transformed galleries in the Whitechapel Art Gallery, the Kunstwerke, and Fundacio Antoni Tapies in Barcelona into a film makers club-room, three beautiful curtained cinema spaces, and an archive lounge.
Enthusiasm investigated how the amateur, the enthusiast or the hobbyist works invisibly within the relentless flow of ‘official’ culture, frequently adopting a counter-cultural tone of tactical resistance and criticism. In Poland under socialism even leisure was organised through factory-sponsored associations, and yet these film-makers activities became a space for dreams of love, criticism and freedom.
View: Whitechapel Art Gallery, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Kunstwerke