People

Paul Szynol

Paul was born in Warsaw, Poland, and moved to NYC at the age of 12, the year that the city’s transit fare rose from 75 cents to 90 cents; 33 previously unknown Bach pieces were found in an academic library; and Canon demoed its first digital still camera. Besides New York City and Warsaw, he’s lived in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Alexandria (VA), Berkeley, New Haven, Philadelphia, NJ, DC, and, for shorter periods, Kampala and Berlin. During his six seven drives across the US, he’s visited the vast majority of the contiguous states, and, by train, plane or automobile, he’s also visited some 45 50 55 60 countries. He likes stray dogs, depressing movies, trains, Greene and Kundera, Uganda, Pink Floyd, open source software, the Oxford comma, and occasionally translating Polish poetry to English. In the past, Paul was a drummer and a huge nerd computer programmer, and he still plays Pearl drums, and tinkers with Java libraries. He’s interested in technology law, animal rights, and human rights. His films and photos have been shown at festivals and galleries in Europe and North America, and his second short documentary, “Booklyn”, was published by the New Yorker. Paul is a graduate of Columbia University (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa), where he studied history and philosophy, and Yale Law School, where he focused on free speech and intellectual property, and watched a lot of reruns and depressing movies.