In the cinematic space, his work combined fantasy and eroticism, tendencies in his work that became more pronounced with the relaxation of censorship. The artwork was created during the communist era as an alternative to banned U.S. However, a younger generation of critics and filmmakers are in the process of discovering his work.”īird has also compiled a collection of Polish film posters that Borowczyk designed for other filmmakers in the 1950s, prior to his own directing career. Following on the heels of their exhibition in London's famed art and performance space The Horse Hospital in 2014, the Film Society of Lincoln Center will exhibit a dozen specially selected posters from this collection in the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery at the Walter Reade Theater during the run of the retrospective. Story of Sin is based on a book by a famous Polish writer, Stefan Żeromski, which was put on the index by the Catholic Church. For a long time, if he was known, it was as a rather scandalous figure. Blanche, for example, while based on a drama by Juliusz Slowacki, one of Poland's national poets, was never distributed in Poland during the communist period. While his French shorts and features were screened in cine clubs, it is only comparatively recently that today's Polish audiences have been able to see his work. It was a huge success with audiences, but that was 40 years ago. He made only one feature film in Poland: Story of Sin. He left Poland in 1958, and lived and worked in France until his death in 2006. Observed Bird to FilmLinc: “Borowczyk is largely unknown in present-day Poland. Bird will also be on hand at selected screenings to discuss Borowczyk’s work at length.
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The series also includes a sampling of documentaries on Borowczyk, directed by Daniel Bird, which reveal the life and work of Borowczyk, ranging from his early work with animation, his erotic feature films, and his artwork beyond the realm of cinema. Blanche (1971) is about a baron’s young wife who inspires the men around her to fall under her spell, while Goto, Island of Love (1968), a selection of the 1969 New York Film Festival, centers on a petty thief with the ambition to bed a dictator’s wife. Also included are two films that starred his wife and muse, Ligia Branice. The Beast (1975) is a pitch-black comic tale about a French aristocrat’s attempts to sell off his deformed son for sex in order to save the old man’s decrepit mansion. Borowczyk’s relationship to sex is comparable to Peckinpah’s relationship to violence: it’s a theme, one which concerns us all.” In Italy, Alberto Moravia thought of Borowczyk as a cinematic heir to Boccaccio. French audiences always treated his work seriously-he was championed by André Breton, Max Ernst, was friends with André Pieyre de Mandiargues, etc. The whole Borowczyk as pornographer only ever comes up in anglophone debates about his work.
“While Borowczyk’s films are often sexually explicit, they are never solely titillating, so can hardly be described as pornographic. While sometimes explicit, Daniel Bird, co-curator of Obscure Pleasures: The Films of Walerian Borowczyk, noted that, taken in context, the films maligned by some in the past are not meant to be sexually arousing.
He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and concentrated on painting and lithography including the creation of posters for the cinema. At the time of their release, a number of Borowczyk's films were banned in several countries.ĭescribed by The New York Times as “an internationally known surrealist filmmaker described variously by critics as a genius, a pornographer and a genius who also happened to be a pornographer,” Walerian Borowczyk was born in Poland in 1923, and settled in France in 1959 where he did most of his work, directing 40 films. Films including The Beast, Blanche, Goto, Island of Love, and Story of Sin are among those considered masterpieces of surrealist and erotic cinema, featuring performers such as Joe Dallesandro, Udo Kier, Sylvia Kristel, and Paloma Picasso. Titled Obscure Pleasures: The Films of Walerian Borowczyk (April 2- 9), the program will present seldom-seen work from the controversial filmmaker on the big screen. Polish filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk will be celebrated in an April series at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.