Craig Conway attends independent film festival in Lodz

On behalf of the U.S. Embassy, Deputy Political Counselor Craig Conway attended the 5th annual “Off, Jak Goraco” film festival at Lodz’s premier independent cinema, the Charlie Cinema.  The Festival brings together film students, as well as amateur and professional independent filmmakers, from all over Poland to participate in various presentations, debates and a competition in several categories: feature film, documentary, animation, video-clip, and student film.   Conway introduced one of three documentaries made available by the U.S. Embassy, a proud partner of the event.  In “The Order of Myths” director Margaret Brown traces the exotic world of secret mystic societies and centuries-old pageantry of Mardi Gras as celebrated in Mobile, Alabama, where it remains a segregated event.  Against an opulent background, the film uncovers a tangled web of historical power dynamics, elusive forces that keep this hallowed tradition organized along enduring color lines.  Conway also attended a screening of “Traces of the Trade,” nominated for a Sundance Grand Jury Prize, in which filmmaker Katrina Brown discovers that her New England ancestors were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history.  She and nine cousins retrace the triangle trade – New England, Africa, Cuba – and gain new perspective on the black/white divide in the United States.