Malgorzata Potocka will be present at the screening.

Małgorzata Potocka’s award-winning documentary, The Guardian of the Past, is about the art historian Borys Voznytsky, who fought relentlessly under Soviet tyranny to preserve some twelve thousand works of Ukrainian and Polish sacred art. Voznytsky spent decades traveling around Ukraine and its abandoned churches in search of neglected icons, religious paintings, sculptures, and liturgical objects. Potocka’s film offers an exclusive peek at the collection, maintained until today at the St. Bernard Monastery in Olesko, Ukraine, where Voznytsky first hid it.

In 2013 the National Art Gallery in Lviv and the Mystetskyi Arsenal (Art Arsenal), a former
munitions factory turned into Kyiv’s largest art space, created the Boris Voznytsky Award in recognition of outstanding contribution in the field of fostering and furthering museum development. The prize will be awarded every other year on Voznytsky’s birthday, April 18th.

Borys Voznytsky (1926-2012) was a revered art historian, long-time director of the Lviv National Art Gallery, honorary member of the Academy of Arts of Ukraine, doctor emeritus of the Kraków Pedagogical Academy, and chairman of the Ukrainian National Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM). During World War II he served in the Soviet Army, but once the war was over he enrolled in the Ivan Trush (Trusz) School of Fine Arts, and subsequently went on to study art history at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg. In 1960, he became a deputy director of the National Museum of Art in Ukraine, and in 1962 – the head of the Lviv National Art Gallery. At that time, the gallery consisted of approximately 10,000 artifacts, housed in a single room; during Voznytsky’s term as the Director, the collection grew exponentially, prompting the extension of the gallery by 15 additional sections. During the 1960s and 70s, he engaged art historians and enthusiasts to preserve some 12,000 museum-worthy artifacts, which otherwise would have been destroyed as a part of the Soviet campaign against religion. The works of art salvaged from abandoned churches, houses and convents were then housed in castles administered by Voznytsky. The collection boasts a large selection of sculptures by the Galician Baroque sculptor Johann Georg Pinzel, known among researchers as the “Slavic Michelangelo.” The exhibition Johann Georg Pinsel: Un sculpteur baroque en Ukraine au XVIIIe siecle, on display at the Louvre in Paris through February 25, 2013, “would have not taken place without [Borys Voznytsky’s] many years of work,” said the curator Hilem Scherf in an interview published in an Ukrainian paper The Day. Late in his career, Voznytsky’s explorations expanded to churches of more recent periods. The fact that the Lviv National Art Gallery is currently home to 60,000 works is a lasting testimony to his steadfast dedication, hard work, and undying love for the arts. Borys Voznytsky died in a car accident on the way to one of the sites he cared for in the spring of 2012.

Małgorzata Maria Potocka (b. 1953) is a Polish actress, director, photographer, and producer of documentaries, experimental film, and video. She studied acting and directing at the National Film School in Łódź, Poland. In 1985, she has been a lecturer at the Boston Arts Academy. She is most famous for her role in Andrzej Wajda’s Everything for Sale (1968); she starred in The Crystal Ball (1972) directed by Stanisław Różewicz and in The Circus is Leaving (1982), by Krzysztof Wierzbiański. Her photographic work has been shown in Warsaw, Kraków, Paris, Budapest and New York. Since 1980, Potocka has been a member of Society for Creators of Culture and the Polish Filmmakers’ Association, major organizations involved in promoting Polish art and culture abroad. The Guardian of the Past garnered awards at documentary festivals in Los Angeles (2005), Kyiv (2006) and Moscow (2007).

THE POLISH CULTURAL INSTITUTE NEW YORK, established in 2000, is a diplomatic mission to the United States serving under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland.

The Institute’s mission is to build, nurture and promote cultural ties between the United States and Poland by presenting Polish culture to American audiences and by connecting Polish artists and scholars to American institutions, introducing them to their professional counterparts in the United States, and facilitating their participation in contemporary American culture.