Part of Joanna Rajkowska’s project “Benjamin in Konya” was the film “The Stroll to the Library”. I was the producer of this film. Together with the artist, the crew, Jewish Theater actor Henryk Rajfer playing the role of Walter Benjamin and 150 kg of equipment, we flew to Konya – located in southern Turkey, the former capital of the Seljuk sultanate, the burial place of Rumi – the most prominent Sufi poet and founder of the brotherhood of whirling dervishes.
The result is an 11-minute para-documentary, stylized as a silent film from the early 20th century, about Walter Benjamin’s fictional visit to Konya.
We shot the film simultaneously on film and digitally, on Canon cameras converted to use with a set of lenses from the 1950s, lost in the 1960s, and miraculously found years later in one of Lodz’s attics.
