Katka Reszke
is a Polish-born, U.S.-based writer, documentary filmmaker, photographer and researcher in Jewish history, culture, and identity. She holds a Doctorate in Jewish Education from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a Diploma in Jewish Studies from the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and a Masters in Cultural Studies from the University of Wroclaw, Poland.
She is the author of Return Of The Jew: Identity Narratives of the Third Post-Holocaust Generation of Jews in Poland (2013) and the chief screenwriter of the acclaimed partially animated documentary film Karski & The Lords of Humanity (2015).
As a writer and filmmaker, Reszke specializes in Polish-Jewish history and relations, as well as human rights, social justice, minority and gender issues. Her film director credits include Shimon’s Returns, Coming Out Polish Style, This is Not a Fairy Tale, and Magda. She also served as Second Director & Editor of HBO’s Trans-Action and as Editor of The Peretzniks and the award-winning Castaways.
Katka Reszke lectures on different aspects of the Polish-Jewish experience at educational and cultural institutions in North America, Europe and Israel. Recipient of fellowships from the Memorial Foundation of Jewish Culture and the Mandel Foundation, Katka is a member of the ROI Community – A Schusterman Initiative, and a contributor to the core exhibition of POLIN – The Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
During the Fall Semester of 2015, Katka was the Helen Gartner Hammer Scholar-in-Residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute.
She served as the Director of Boston ReelAbilities Film Festival between 2019-2021.
Her ongoing research-creation project is The Meshugene Effect, which explores personal narratives of people who embark on a pursuit of Jewish identity following a hunch - a feeling, an intuition, an irrational conviction about their Jewish descent. Combining autoethnography with qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews and ethnographic observation, the project tries to make sense of the hunch experienced as a haunting, as a repressed memory, or as a precognitive affect. The Meshugene Effect explores cultural and discursive contingencies surrounding religion, gender and authenticity and how they affect the way we make sense of experiences of memory and transition. All of this set against the landscape of troubled Polish-Jewish history and a new curious Polish-Jewish present.
The title of the project contains a Yiddish word that translates to the no doubt fraught English word “crazy”. However, “meshugene” is used here as a direct quote and in a non-stigmatizing way within a contextualized frame of reference.
Katka Reszke resides in Massachusetts with her partner Noelle and their dog Olive.
She is the author of Return Of The Jew: Identity Narratives of the Third Post-Holocaust Generation of Jews in Poland (2013) and the chief screenwriter of the acclaimed partially animated documentary film Karski & The Lords of Humanity (2015).
As a writer and filmmaker, Reszke specializes in Polish-Jewish history and relations, as well as human rights, social justice, minority and gender issues. Her film director credits include Shimon’s Returns, Coming Out Polish Style, This is Not a Fairy Tale, and Magda. She also served as Second Director & Editor of HBO’s Trans-Action and as Editor of The Peretzniks and the award-winning Castaways.
Katka Reszke lectures on different aspects of the Polish-Jewish experience at educational and cultural institutions in North America, Europe and Israel. Recipient of fellowships from the Memorial Foundation of Jewish Culture and the Mandel Foundation, Katka is a member of the ROI Community – A Schusterman Initiative, and a contributor to the core exhibition of POLIN – The Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
During the Fall Semester of 2015, Katka was the Helen Gartner Hammer Scholar-in-Residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute.
She served as the Director of Boston ReelAbilities Film Festival between 2019-2021.
Her ongoing research-creation project is The Meshugene Effect, which explores personal narratives of people who embark on a pursuit of Jewish identity following a hunch - a feeling, an intuition, an irrational conviction about their Jewish descent. Combining autoethnography with qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews and ethnographic observation, the project tries to make sense of the hunch experienced as a haunting, as a repressed memory, or as a precognitive affect. The Meshugene Effect explores cultural and discursive contingencies surrounding religion, gender and authenticity and how they affect the way we make sense of experiences of memory and transition. All of this set against the landscape of troubled Polish-Jewish history and a new curious Polish-Jewish present.
The title of the project contains a Yiddish word that translates to the no doubt fraught English word “crazy”. However, “meshugene” is used here as a direct quote and in a non-stigmatizing way within a contextualized frame of reference.
Katka Reszke resides in Massachusetts with her partner Noelle and their dog Olive.
August 9, 2013
Return of the Jew: Interview with Katka Reszke
Yedies editor Roberta Newman sat down with Katka Reszke to discuss her book and her thoughts on Jews in Poland today.
www.yivo.org/return-of-the-jew-interview-with-katka-reszke
Yedies editor Roberta Newman sat down with Katka Reszke to discuss her book and her thoughts on Jews in Poland today.
www.yivo.org/return-of-the-jew-interview-with-katka-reszke
