Today, FilmLinc is giving a “tease” of sorts of the upcoing Walerian Borowczyk retrospective, taking place at the Film Society April 2-9, spotlighting a dozen provocative stills from the Polish director's films.
A filmmaker who emerged from a visual arts background, Walerian Borowczyk began his career studying painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków in the early 1950’s. He even designed movie posters, which earned him a national award in 1953. Borowczyk immigrated to France in the late 1950s, and produced one animated feature as well as several animated shorts, including Jeux des anges (1964), selected by Terry Gilliam as one of the 10-best animated films of all time.
Goto, Isle of Love (1968), starring his own wife, Ligia Branice, marked his provocative foray into live-action films. His features are nothing if not polarizing, with some critics lauding them as masterworks and other decrying them as pornography. Their graphic displays of sensuality lampoon Victorian mores and some of Europe’s most revered institutions. One of the most controversial of these, The Story of Sin (1975), dares to point to hypocrisy in the Catholic Church. His portrayal of women remains problematic. He depicts them through an undeniably voyeuristic male gaze, and yet his heroines are not ashamed of their sexuality, and they frequently use it to destroy the men that would control them.
Obscure Pleasures: The Films of Walerian Borowczyk opens on April 2 with The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne (1981) and closes on April 9 with Immoral Women (1979).
Behind Convent Walls (1977) takes place in a convent full of sexually repressed nuns. A commentary on the relationship between flesh and spirit, it features beautifully executed hand held cinematography as well as the final
performance of Borowczyk's wife, Ligia Branice. Screens April 5 and 6.
“Immoral Tales is four episodes, each rolling back further into the annals of history, bound only by a maxim by La Rochefoucauld: Love pleases more by the ways in which it shows itself. A veritable cavalcade of depravity, Immoral Tales features cosmic fellatio, transcendental masturbation, blood-drenched lesbianism, and papal incest,” according to a description by the Film Society. The film screens Sunday, April 5.
A Private Collection (1973), is an erotic documentary approach to Victorian sexual mores. It screens Tuesday, April 7 as part of the Borowczyk Shorts Program.
Lulu (1980) is based on the Lulu plays by Frank Wedekind and shot entirely on sets that Borowczyk designed. The Film Society of Lincoln Center describes the feature as “cool as an erotic fantasy played out inside a doll’s house.” Lulu screens April 7 and 9.
Theatre of Mr. and Mrs. Kabal (1967) is Borowczyk’s only animated feature and it has been hailed as the rigid answer to Disney’s gooey sentimentality. The film screens Saturday, April 4.
Immoral Women (1979), a film in three parts, follows three women in different historical periods who use their sexuality to destroy the men who oppress them. The film screens Thursday, April 9.
The Beast (1975) follows a French aristocrat whose attempts to save a crumbling mansion by marrying his deformed son to an American heiress are interrupted by the bestial dreams that plague him. The film screens April 3 and 8.
[For more information including screening schedules for the series Obscure Pleasures: The Films of Walerian Borowczyk (April 2-9), visit filmlinc.com]
