Sancho el Sabio Vital Fundazioa presented ‘W Kraju Basków (1971): A propaganda film by the People's Republic of Poland about the Basque Country in the 1970s’

As part of "Ikerlariak Sancho el Sabio", a cycle of conferences that gives visibility to research that approaches Basque and Alava culture from new perspectives, and led by the researcher Magdalena Anna Gajewska, "W Kraju Basków (1971)" (“In the Basque Country”), a Polish documentary short film about the Basque Country in the 1970s", directed by Włodzimierz Borowik, author of more than a hundred reports and short documentary propaganda films, was presented. The documentary was produced for Polish Television, precisely at the time when this medium began to be used for propaganda purposes, previously reserved for the press and radio. The film, which lasts almost 12 minutes, presents a vision of the Basque Country constructed from the perspective of a Soviet bloc country and, by establishing similarities between the Basques and the Poles, carries out the propagandistic principles of the Polish regime. The talk analysed this image in the context of the propagandistic role of television in the political system of the People's Republic of Poland.

Magdalena Anna Gajewska holds a PhD in Literature from the University of Warsaw, with a thesis entitled "Myths, legends and folk tales on the big screen. Reinterpretations of Basque oral literature in contemporary cinema". She also has a master's degree in Iberian Philology and a degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology and Iberian Studies from the same university. She is part of the research group "(Another)Iberia: Other Representations, Cultures and Identities on the Iberian Peninsula", an inter-university team affiliated to the University of Warsaw that focuses on the study of minoritised Iberian languages and cultures. It has collaborated with several non-governmental organisations on cultural projects integrating research and art. During the years 2022-2023, she was the president of the Alter Iberia Association, a Polish association dedicated to the dissemination of art, culture and languages of the peripheral cultures of the Iberian Peninsula in this country.

Magdalena Anna Gajewska's research and analysis has been published in the latest issue of the "Sancho el Sabio Journal: Basque culture and research".