The 19th Millennium Docs Against Gravity (12 – 22 May 2022) will present both the first documentary films, as well as feature productions, of American essayist Susan Sontag. This will be the first time such a wide-ranging showcase will be presented to the public in Poland.
At Millennium Docs Against Gravity, the festival audience will see the documentary Promised Lands (1974). Filmed in October 1973 in Israel, repelling the attack of the Syrian-Egypt coalition during the twenty-day Yom Kippur war. The film is considered to be one of Sontag’s most appreciated works.
Also, screening will be the film Waiting for Godot … in Sarajevo, co-directed by Sontag with Nicole Stéphane, an anti-war gesture and a tribute to the city’s inhabitants. The retrospective also includes the film Unguided Tour (1993) inspired by her book I, Etcetera, which eludes clear distinctions between the cinema of facts and the cinema of fiction. The viewers will be able to see films inspired by the works of Ingmar Bergman – Duet for Cannibals, a film debut made in 1969 in Sweden and her next work Brother Carl from 1971.
To complete the context of Sontag’s work, the program,e will also present the film Town Bloody Hall by Donn Alan Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus (1979), a direct cinema recording of the debate that took place on April 30, 1971 in thhe New York City Hall between feminists and culture critics Germaine Greer, Jill Johnston, Jacqueline Ceballos, Diana Trilling and the snappy Norman Mailer. Finally, the biographical film Regarding Susan Sontag by Nancy Kates, will also be presented.
