Events

The Annual Modjeska Club Christmas Caroling Party will take place at the McGroarty Arts Center in Tujunga (7570 McGroarty Terrace, Tujunga, CA 91042 ) on December 14, 2024 at 5:30 pm - dinner at 6 pm, carols at 7 pm. Christmas Caroling will be led by singer-pianist Olivia Kierdal.  

The dinner of Polish traditional dishes will take the form of a potluck, coordinated by Kasia Ligwińska and Maria Łobodzińska. The menus will be sent later. To RSVP for the event, so we have a headcount, please reply to prezes@modjeska.org by DECEMBER 7th, with your choice of dishes. 

The Modjeska Club will purchase two turkeys for a local caterer. Since there is no heating option in the now antique kitchen, bring your hot dishes in your own chafing dishes with fuel available. Joe DeCenzo will assist in decorating and setup for AV and dinner, but more volunteers are needed. 

The signup for the dishes will be emailed separately.  

The event will start from breaking the Christmas Wafer (Opłatek) and best wishes at 6:00pm, followed by holiday dinner buffet with traditional dishes. The caroling will start at 7 pm.  

PIOTR D. SIEMION

Piotr D. Siemion is an accomplished novelist and essay author, writing in English and his native Polish. He was  raised in the academic center of Wrocław (the pre-1945 Breslau) in Poland, where he studied English  Literature and was, in his own words, "a bit of a counterculture figure." After his early debut as a literary translator, he spent his formative years in New York City. In 1988 he traveled to the United States as a Fulbright scholar, where he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the subject of American twentieth-century novels. Between 1988 and 2000 he moved between the US (New York) and Canada (Montreal), during which time he published a series of translations, among others, of Yeats' poetry and Tom Clancy's prose. He has translated Thomas Pynchon (the ingenious translation of The Crying of Lot 49, for which he won the 'Literatura na Świecie award), John Gardner and Robert Nye. He worked as a columnist and anecdote writer for the underground journal 'BruLion'. In 1997 he completed his legal studies at the University of Columbia and worked in Manhattan in the legal practice of Weil, Gotshal & Manges. Since the summer of 2000 he has lived in Warsaw.

His return to Poland after twelve years abroad coincided with the beginning of his novelistic career. He lives just outside Warsaw, that the writer describes as "a zany, postmodern city, where one can, these days, fully experience the 21st century dynamics of intermingling languages, civilizations, and ideas, while remaining rooted in Europe’s difficult history." In fact, his artistic work has always been marked by cross-border but also cross-disciplinary influences. In the U.S. he received his Ph.D. degree in American fiction but also studied for a law school degree, both from Columbia University in New York. In the last three decades, Siemion has pursued a two-edged career of an international lawyer and a novelist, never being able to decide which path to abandon. In the end, he is still doing both things at once, writing novels and, in parallel, working on AI projects for a Warsaw-based publishing house. 

In his early years, he used to translate into Polish the works of British, Irish, and American authors, including Thomas Pynchon, Robert Nye, and W.B. Yeats. In 2000, he published his first novel, Niskie Łąki (“Low Meadows”), which was hailed as the literary event of the year, and was subsequently translated into German, Hungarian, and Ukrainian. It was meant as a chronicle of his post-Communist generation, depicting the transition from the Cold War era to the new, chaotic, capitalist order of things. In 2004, his second novel, Finimondo, appeared, to good reviews but less publicity. It was a business thriller and, for a second novel, it had good reviews. In 2015, the book was followed by a personal, book-length biographical essay, The Year of the Snake. A Diary. In the meantime, he periodically published other literary translations (listed below), essays, and reviews. 

Siemion published his most recent novel, Bella, ciao, in 2022. A post-apocalyptic riff on modernity’s key philosophical issues, it coincided with Russia’s invasion on Ukraine. Accordingly, some critics read it as a fact-based report from the conflict. At any event, in 2023 Bella, ciao, was shortlisted for the Warsaw Literary Prize, as well as the Central European Literary Prize Angelus. At this time, Siemion is busy outlining a new work of fiction, but in parallel he concern myself with the rapidly changing Polish and English literary idioms. In fact, he enthusiastically embraced the chance to translate Solar Bones into Polish precisely because Mike McCormack’s novel intermingles the 21st century vernacular with strong echoes of grand literary traditions: an exercise in literary sleight-of-hand that is a challenge and a joy to its translators.  

STRUGGLE: THE LIFE AND LOST ART OF SZUKALSKI (Wikipedia)

Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski is a 2018 documentary film directed by Irek Dobrowolski, written by Stephen Cooper and Irek Dobrowolski and starring Stanisław Szukalski, Glenn Bray and Robert Williams. The documentary is produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, and his father George DiCaprio. [The film was released by Netflix on December 21, 2018. The documentary tells the story of the Polish artist Stanisław Szukalski’s troubled life and complicated body of work. He created his own language, and is an innovative sculptor, who once lost all his work in a Nazi bombing raid. It also focuses on his nationalism in the lead-up to World War II, and his subsequent transformation during the second half of his life. The documentary was reviewed positively by Karen Han in The New York Times, who stated that it "manages to deliver" on the breadth and depth implied by the title. Han noted: "Still, for Bray, George DiCaprio and others who knew Szukalski in his final years, their struggle with his past is deeply personal. They effectively become subjects themselves, grappling with how he ought to be remembered. The viewer is left to decide."

ANNA DOBROWOLSKA

Producing films and television programs since 2002, Anna's most recent release is the feature documentary Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski from producer Leonardo DiCaprio and NETFLIX Studios.  Struggle premiered on December 21, 2018 at LACMA in Los Angeles and is now available 190 countries (in 34 languages) to an audience of 160 million. Reception has been phenomenal: rave reviews in top publications from around the world (New York Times, Observer, Guardian, Daily Mirror, Tribute and many more); Netflix ranked it 4th Best Film of 2018; and ranks #5 on the list of Must See movies in 2019 according to IMDb - the most popular industry portal and the defacto authority in film and television. Her portfolio boasts an extensive run in television, having produced more than 300 episodes and 26 broadcast shows, a number of on-stage musicals with famous Polish stars played in Warsaw’s Sala Kongresowa and the Polish National Opera, and multi-award winning productions like In Fortunes Debt, Dancing with Drugs, and The Portraitist.

IREK DOBROWOLSKI

Director of over 25 documentaries and two feature films - many of which have been internationally nominated and awarded, including The Magnolia Award at Shanghai Film Festival, the Grand Prix at Stockholm’s International Film Festival, Lajkonik at Krakow Film Festival and the Golden Phoenix at Warsaw’s Jewish Motifs Festival. His film August Sky: 63 Days of Glory has become a cult favorite in Poland, with more than 350,000 Facebook fans who post poems and show off August Sky tattoo art. The trailer has garnered over 8 million views on Youtube. Irek's latest film, Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski, was produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and released by Netflix Studios.