
The Long Strange Trips of Wojciech Jerzy Has
From March 22-31, Film at Lincoln Center and DI Factory present “The Long Strange Trips of Wojciech Jerzy Has,” a comprehensive celebration of the Polish filmmaker’s singularly inventive filmography.
Wojciech Jerzy Has
1963|
Poland|
102 minutes|
Polish with English subtitles
One of the most acclaimed works of his early career, Has’s sixth feature follows a popular radio actress on a trip to Paris, where she crosses paths with another actor with whom she had a fraught love affair during World War II.
1964|
Poland|
183 minutes|
Polish with English Subtitles
Based on one of the greatest works of world literature, Has’s most enduringly influential achievements centers on a mountain-crossing that turns into a sequence of supernatural and frightful events for a military officer wandering through Spain.
Wojciech Jerzy Has
1973|
Poland|
124 minutes|
Polish with English subtitles
The collective trauma of the Holocaust looms over this adaptation of Jewish author Bruno Schulz’s visionary and poetic reflection on the nature of time and death, which won the Jury Award at Cannes.
Wojciech Jerzy Has
1958|
102 minutes
Has’s debut feature—following a day in the life of a desperate, chaotic drunkard—expressionistically renders the post-traumatic delirium dwelling within the everyday.
Wojciech Jerzy Has
1958|
Poland|
103 minutes|
Polish with English subtitles
Has’s second feature chronicles a budding, doomed romance between a bourgeois student and a world-weary barmaid in prewar Poland.
Wojciech Jerzy Has
1960|
Poland|
92 minutes|
Polish with English subtitles
Has continues his preoccupation with the relationship between cinema and literature in his darkly funny third feature, about a sickly writer and the overcrowded single-room apartment he shares with a motley assortment of acquaintances and near-strangers in 1930s Warsaw.
Wojciech Jerzy Has
1961|
Poland|
76 minutes|
Polish with English Subtitles
Has’s fourth feature follows a decorated actress (Lidia Wysocka) as she returns to her hometown to attend her grandfather’s funeral, occasioning her to revisit her family’s own history.
Wojciech Jerzy Has
1962|
Poland|
97 minutes|
Polish with English subtitles
Memory and guilt intertwine and drive a young drifter to hide out at a remote mining outpost populated by men desperate to strike it rich.
Wojciech Jerzy Has
1966|
Poland|
84 minutes|
Polish with English subtitles
A haunted man’s return to Kraków following 20 years of self-imposed exile in London serves as the narrative setup for Has’s eighth feature, one whose thematic and formal developments presage his later masterpieces.
Wojciech Jerzy Has
1968|
Poland|
160 minutes|
Polish with English subtitles
Has’s lavish period epic, depicting the decline of the Polish aristocracy as their social perch is usurped by the ascendant capitalist class, follows a new-money merchant and his many attempts to capture the heart of a down-on-her-luck contessa.
Wojciech Jerzy Has
1983|
Poland|
112 minutes|
Polish with English subtitles
Returning to the smaller-scale storytelling of Has’s earlier films and working from a story by Anton Chekhov, this intimate yet kaleidoscopic film follows an aging medical professor as he looks back on the events of his life regretfully.
Wojciech Jerzy Has
1985|
Poland|
119 minutes|
Polish with English subtitles
One of Has’s most potent satires, Write and Fight is set at the outset of World War I and follows a young journalist who finds himself incarcerated in a Russian prison, where he’s forced to share a cell with a safecracker and a monk-turned-murderer.
1986|
Poland|
120 minutes|
Polish with English subtitles
Set in 19th-century Scotland, this film concerns a deceased young man whose corpse is exhumed by grave robbers, only for the young man to return to life in order to recount the events that preceded his demise.
1988|
Poland|
115 minutes|
Polish with English subtitles
One final journey for Has’s final film: a young alchemy student and his teacher flee the inquisition, embarking on a voyage across a 16th-century Germany ravaged by plague on which they meet a succession of eccentric religious figures.
Wojciech Jerzy Has
Poland|
76 minutes|
Polish with English subtitles
A varied program collecting several of Has’s early fiction and documentary shorts, ranging from fascinating industrial films to assured miniature parables.
Film at Lincoln Center and DI Factory present “The Long Strange Trips of Wojciech Jerzy Has,” a comprehensive celebration of the Polish filmmaker’s singularly inventive filmography, featuring an array of new digital restorations. The retrospective will be presented at FLC from March 22 through March 31 and includes each of Has’s 14 features and all of his short films.
In addition to Has’s feature films, select titles will be preceded by a short film by Has. The series will also include a separate program that collects Has’s early fiction and documentary shorts, ranging from fascinating industrial films to assured miniature parables.
Organized by Dan Sullivan (FLC), Jedrzej Sablinski (DI Factory), and Polish Cultural Institute New York. Retrospective is co-financed by Polish Film Institute.
Acknowledgements:
Annette Insdorf and Milestone Films














