DESTINATION WORLD: POLAND

INDOOR EVENTS Cultural Venues

FILM: Screenings at the National Park Visitor Center
Lowell Debut of award winning Polish Films

5:30–7:10 AN ANGEL IN LOVE/ZAKOCHANY ANIOL • 2005
The angel Giordano, who first appeared in “An Angel in Kraków,” begins to seriously contemplate life on Earth since he cannot return to Heaven. He is learning to live happily on Earth, but his final conversion to manhood proves to be a much greater shock than expected. Fortunately, Heaven doesn't abandon its angels (even fired ones) and Giordano soon meets somebody who can bring him Heaven to Earth.

7:15–9:00 EDI • 2002
Edi, a classic casualty of capitalism, is an educated man fallen on hard times, working as a junk collector until his brainy reputation lands him a job tutoring the teenage sister of two crime lord “brothers.” Tragedy ensues when the sister finds herself pregnant and accuses Edi of rape. The shocking ending and powerful performances elevate Edi's tale into an unexpectedly moving parable of self-sacrifice and redemption.

MUSIC, DANCE, AND FOOD: Location: the Lowell Five Main Stage at the National Park Visitor Center's ALL Arts Gallery
Polish Tasters at the National Park Visitor Center
7:15–7:45 Polka Dance Instruction with Andrew and Gloria Lucas
6:00–9:00 “Eastern Sound Orchestra” Polka Band: Entertaining folks all over the country for the past 30 years!

ART AND CULTURE:
Whistler House Museum of Art: Host site for “All Things Polish”– A presentation of food, art, and more...

Visual Arts at the COOL Corner Gallery:

• Susan Jaworski-Stranc of APPLE CIDER PRESS & PRINTS STUDIO is an established artist/printmaker, teacher and writer. She recently relocated to Lowell, Massachusetts.  Ms. Jaworski-Stranc has exhibited her handcrafted books and limited edition prints in numerous juried fine art & craft shows.
• Stephanie Milewski graduated from Mass College of Art in May of '04 with a BFA in Illustration. Her printmaking process provides a juxtaposition between messages of media consumption and handmade methods. She is currently experimenting with the intaglio and drypoint etching methods within her work, loving the subtleties of the printmaking process.

Polish Heritage Display at the National Park Visitor Center

Friends Fabric Art: Pysanki Egg Decorating-
Use a kistka tool to put a wax pattern on an egg & then add color with dyes. Follow a traditional pattern or make up your own.

POETRY:Location: the National Park Visitor Center
7:30–9:00 Polish Literature: Tradition and Experimentation

Join us for an exciting evening of Polish literature with Harvard University's Benjamin Paloff, translator of Dorota Maslowska's internationally acclaimed Snow White and Russian Red (Grove Press, 2005). Paloff will speak about the history of Polish literature, where it is now, and where it's going. Paloff will be joined by Tanya Larkin, Jean Monahan, Peter Richards, and Gigi Thibodeau, reading poems by Szymborska, Milosz and other Polish poets.

• Benjamin Paloff grew up in Atlantic City and lives in Boston, where he is a poetry editor for Boston Review and a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard. His poems have appeared in The Antioch Review, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and elsewhere, and he is a frequent contributor to The Nation and Harvard Review. He received an MFA from the University of Michigan, where he taught creative writing workshops and received two Hopwood Awards, and was recently a Fulbright-Hays Fellow in Russia and Poland. He has translated several works from Eastern and Central European literatures, most recently Dorota Maslowska's Snow White and Russian Red (Grove Press, 2005).
• Jean Monahan is the author of two books of poetry, Hands, which won the Anhinga Poetry Prize in 1991, and Believe It Or Not, just published by Orchises Press this year. Monahan's poetry is published in such journals as The New Republic, Orion, Graham House, Shenandoah, Seneca Review, Columbia, Chelsea, and Nimrod, with a poem forthcoming in The Atlantic Monthly. Formerly a writer for Boston's public television station, WGBH, Monahan taught English in China in 1998-89 and has traveled widely. She holds an MFA from Columbia's Creative Writing Division.
• Peter Richards was born in 1967 in Urbana, Illinois. He is a recipient of a Mass. Cultural Council Artist Grant in Poetry, an Iowa Arts Fellowship, an Academy of American Poets Prize, and the John Logan Award. His poems have appeared in Agni, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Fence, The Yale Review, and other journals. He is the author of Oubliette (Verse Press, 2001), which won the Massachusetts Center for the Book Honors Award, and Nude Siren (Verse Press, 2003). Richards is currently Briggs-Copeland Lecturer at Harvard University.
• Gigi Thibodeau lives in Lowell and teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Massachussetts Lowell.  Her poems have appeared in journals nationwide, including River Styx, the Birmingham Poetry Review, the Georgia State University Review, Louisiana Literature, the Larcom Review, and Lowell's own Renovation Journal, among others.  She received the Judith Seigel Pearson Award for Fiction from Wayne State University, and her recent article on the Polish Gypsy poet Papusza can be found at the online journal Kmareka. 
• Tanya Larkin was born in Italy and grew up in Western Pennyslvania. She was educated at Columbia University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. In 2004 she was recipient of a Mass. Cultural Council Artist Grant. She teaches English at the New England Institute of Art and her most recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Hat and Boog City, an East Village weekly.

Movie ratings will be indicated at each venue.  You must be 17 or older to be admitted to an R-rated film without a parent or guardian.

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