Magda Lipska is a curator and art theorist currently working at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, where she curated and co-curated several exhibitions, such as Who Will Write the History of Tears? Artists on Women’s Rights (2021), Niepodległe. Women and the National Discourse (2018), Danwen Xing. A Personal Diary (2017), and Least the Two Seas Meet (2015) with Tarek Abou el Fetouh. Together with Piotr Slodkowski, she co-edited Was Socialist Realism Global? Modernism, Soc-modernism, Socially Engaged Figuration (2023) and with Monika Talarczyk, Hope Is of a Different Color. Both were published by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, From the Global South to the Lodz Film School (2022). She contributed to numerous publications, including Points of Convergence, Alternative views on Performance (2017) and Historie filmu awangardowego. Od dadaizmu do postinternetu (2020).

Departing from the book Hope Is of a Different Color. From the Global South to the Lodz Film School (2022), co-edited with Monika Talarczyk, the presentation will address the history of student exchanges between the Global South and the Polish People’s Republic during the Cold War. As Poland’s second-largest city, Łódź was a hub for international students who studied in Poland from the mid-1960s to 1989. The Łódź Film School, a member of CILECT since 1955, was a favoured destination, with students from Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East accounting for one-third of its international student body. The presentation will shed light on the experiences and careers of a generation of young filmmakers, many of whom succeeded as artists in their home countries, and also provide insight into race relations in Central and Eastern Europe.