Podwórka (2009)
Sharon Lockhart
Podwórka, Sharon Lockhart, USA, 16mm > digital, 31 min, 2009
Podwórka takes as its subject matter the courtyards of Łódź, Poland, and the children that inhabit them. A ubiquitous architectural element of the city, Łódź’s courtyards are the playgrounds of the children that live in the surrounding apartment buildings. Separated from the streets, they provide a sanctuary from the traffic and commotion of the city. Yet far from the overdetermined playgrounds of America, the courtyards are still very much urban environments. In six different courtyards throughout the city, we see parking lots, storage units, and metal armatures become jungle gyms, sandboxes, and soccer fields in the children’s world. A series of fleeting interludes within city life, Podwórka is both a study of a specific place and an evocation of the resourcefulness of childhood.
Streaming Details
This film is available to stream globally.
Program Partners
This film is co-presented with neugerriemschneider and Art Windsor-Essex.
Image credits: all artworks and stills courtesy neugerriemschneider © Sharon Lockhart. Portrait courtesy © James Benning.
About the artist
Sharon Lockhart (USA) is a photographer, sculptor, and filmmaker born in Norwood, Massachusetts, in 1964. Celebrated for her highly conceptual yet elegant work, Lockhart’s practice involves collaborations that unfold over extended periods of time, often incorporating architectural elements, extensive periods of research, and long-term relationships with her subjects and collaborators. She received a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute (1991) and an MFA from ArtCenter College of Design (1993). Since 1997, she has completed more than 15 films which have screened at festivals and museums around the world, including Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Tomio Koyama Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Gladstone Gallery, Blum & Poe, Bonniers Konsthall, The Power Plant, Baltimore Museum of Art, Venice Biennale, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Hammer Museum, Walker Art Center, REDCAT, Viennale, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Jeu de Paume, Toronto International Film Festival, and Media City Film Festival. Her work is in permanent collections of institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Getty Foundation, Tate Modern, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Yokohama Museum of Art. She is a recipient of Radcliffe (2007–08), Guggenheim (2001), and Rockefeller (2000) Fellowships, as well as a Herb Alpert Award (2015). She lives in Los Angeles, California, where she teaches at CalArts.