Pawel Pawlikowski's 'Last Resort' Explores Derridean Hospitality and Eastern European Female Representation
Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius explores Pawel Pawlikowski's 2000 movie 'Last Resort' through the lens of Jacques Derrida's hospitality theory. The narrative centers on Tanya, a Russian artist who, along with her son Artyom, unintentionally becomes a 'refugee by mistake' while being held in Britain. Unlike typical asylum narratives, the film delves into the experiences of an Eastern European woman confronting border policies. Pawlikowski, who was born in Poland and educated in Britain, produced the film on a documentary-style budget, earning the Michael Powell award at Edinburgh in 2000 and a BAFTA for Best British Newcomer in 2001. Murawska-Muthesius links Derrida's ideas to film representation, critiquing the erasure of individual identities by immigration systems. She previously shared this analysis at the CongressCATH 2002 conference in Leeds.
Key facts
- Pawel Pawlikowski's film 'Last Resort' was released in 2000 by BBC Films
- The film won the Michael Powell award for best British feature at Edinburgh in 2000
- Pawlikowski studied at Edinburgh College of Art and National Film School
- The protagonist Tanya is a Russian artist detained at a British coastal camp
- Jacques Derrida's writings on hospitality inform the film's philosophical framework
- Cold War Hollywood films like 'The Iron Curtain' (1948) shaped Eastern European refugee representations
- The film's detention camp was shot in Margate, described as a 'Kentish Gulag'
- Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius published this analysis on December 20, 2003
Entities
Artists
- Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius
- Pawel Pawlikowski
- Jacques Derrida
- Michael Winterbottom
- Stephen Frears
- Hamid Naficy
- William A. Wellman
- Rouben Mamoulian
- Fred Astaire
- Cyd Charisse
- Ernst Lubitsch
- King Vidor
- Howard Hughes
- Roman Polanski
- Jerzy Skolimowski
- Lukas Moodysson
- Ann-Sofi Sidén
- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
- Immanuel Kant
- Socrates
- Igor Guzhenko
- Lindsay Honey
- Tom Fogg
- Ian Sinclair
- Philip Kerr
- Mark Dooley
- Michael Hughes
- Simon Critchley
- Richard Kearney
- Rachel Bowlby
- Barry Stocker
- Forbes Morlock
- Tomasz Kitlilski
- Pawel Leszkowicz
- Anikó Imre
- Goran Rystad
- Danièle Joly
- Daniel J. Leab
- Nora Sayre
- Peter Biskind
- David Hall
- Frances Stonor Saunders
- Pamela Sharpe
- Gregory A. Kelson
- Debra L. DeLaet
- Gina Buijs
- Stuart Hall
- Hans Reiss
- H.B. Nisbet
- Conor Foley
- Sue Shutter
- Fiachra Gibbons
Institutions
- ARTMargins Online
- BBC Films
- University of Leeds
- AHRB Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory, and History
- Stanford University Press
- Routledge
- Princeton University Press
- Edinburgh College of Art
- National Film School
- BAFTA
- London Film Festival
- Rheinland-Pfalzische Heimat in Europa
- CongressCATH 2002
- Leeds Town Hall
- Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities
- National Museum in Warsaw
- Birkbeck College, University of London
- Faculty of Continuing Education
- Blok: Journal of Stalinist and Post-Stalinist Culture
- St. Antony's College, Oxford
- Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations University of Warwick
- Lund University Press
- Macmillan
- St Martin's Press
- University of Warwick
- Hayward Gallery
- Hayward Gallery Publishing
- National Council for Civil Liberties
- Liberty
- MGM
- RKO
- Paramount
- Miracle
- Netribution
- Rottentomatoes
- Sight and Sound
- The Guardian
- New Statesman and Society
- The New Press
- Dial Press
- Pluto
- Institute of Art
- Longman
- Insel Verlag
- Cambridge University Press
- Clarendon Press
- Berg
- Sage
- The Open University
- Screen
- Third Text
- Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television
- Oxford English Dictionary
Locations
- London
- United Kingdom
- Leeds
- Stanford, California
- New York
- Princeton, NJ
- Frankfurt am Main
- Germany
- Istanbul
- Turkey
- Pakistan
- Iran
- Italy
- France
- Nigeria
- Poland
- Russia
- Edinburgh
- Scotland
- Oxford
- England
- Rheinland-Pfalz
- Margate
- Kent
- Stansted
- Sweden
- Moscow
- Canada
- Ottawa
- Athens
- Greece
- Bydgoszcz
- Liverpool
- Cambridge
- Lund
- Basingstoke
- Asia
- Africa
- Latin America
- Czech Republic
- Paris
- Warsaw