Special screening: Exiles 1915-1922

Belsat TV has the pleasure of inviting you to the premiere screening of Jerzy Kalina’s most recent documentary

Exiles 1915-1922

October 5th, 2017, 4:30 PM, 6 PM
Forum Cinema, 5 Legionowa Street
tickets: 8 PLN (available at the Forum Cinema’s box office)

It is the summer of 1915. The Russian army withdrawing from the Empire’s western governorships is leaving behind scorched earth for the Germans. It is chasing out peasant families; some flee on their own, entire villages are burning. Hundreds of thousands of carts are heading east. They block roads and squeeze past army columns. Hell on earth breaks out: typhus and cholera epidemics, scorching temperatures, lack of drinking water, hunger, shellings and bombardments from advancing Germans.

Huge territories of modern Podlasie, Lubelszczyzna, Chelmszczyzna, Russia’s other western regions and, to a lesser degree, central Poland, empty out. The refugees are mostly Orthodox Christian Belarusians, Ukrainians and Russians (approx. 70 percent), Poles (12 percent), Jews, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Armenians. According to historian estimates, approximately 3 million people abandon their homes. It was the greatest forced migration of the 20th century in this part of Europe.

Those who survive the nightmare of the journey arrive at Don River, to Siberia, to the Caucasus, and to Central Asia. There, they bear witness to two revolutions and a bloody civil war. After 5-7 years, they return to their villages in what is now reborn Poland. There, they find burned down farmhouses, fallow fields, hunger, and mistrustful authorities. They are the lucky ones — approximately 30 percent of the refugees died during exile. 

These incredible and tragic experiences of three million people did not find their scholars. Literature on the topic is very sparse and few recollections have been preserved. In Belarus, as in Russia, this event is unknown. The historical narrative from that period became dominated by descriptions of military operations. Peasants did not keep memoirs, while oral communications have been largely forgotten.

Jerzy Kalina’s movie is, in part a family story. The director’s great grandmother Zofia departed from the small village of Koszele in the district of Bielsk Podlaski of the Grodno governorship to the Cossack stanitsya of Matiumino of the Saratov governorship. There, she gave birth to daughter Nadzieja (Hope). Zofia gave this name to her daughter because she expected them to soon be joined by her father Jakub, who had been drafted into the czarist army. She did not know that her husband died on the frontline. He never saw his daughter….

Jerzy Kalina
Publicist, director of documentary films, for 22 years associated with Polish Television. Head of the Belsat TV Białystok branch office. Director of more than one hundred documentaries produced in over a dozen of Central and Eastern European countries, awarded at numerous European film festivals.

“Exiles 1915-1922” was made in co-production with the Białystok City Office and the Marshal Office of the Podlaskie Voivodeship.

DISCLAIMER: Białystok Cultural Centre is not organizing guest events. Accordingly, BCC is not responsible for any changes in program, dates or cancellation of individual events.