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Series Pass: Success is the Best Revenge - The Films Of Jerzy Skolimowski
Legendary Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski was one of a wave of directors from Eastern Europe who brought a take-no-prisoners artistic adventurousness to filmmaking; in his native Poland, he co-wrote Roman Polanski's seminal Knife in the Water (1962) and directed several psychological dramas of his own. Then, for twenty years, Skolimowski worked in Britain where he made his greatest film, Deep End (1970), revived at the Film Forum a few years back. His stardom dwindled and some time in the early '90s he disappeared altogether. Always diverse in his interests - he had been a jazz musician and poet back in Poland - he moved back home and decided to concentrate on painting.
In 2008 he broke his silence with the film Four Nights with Anna and he was in competition at the Venice Film Festival this year with the film Essential Killing, starring Vincent Gallo. We are pleased to offer this retrospective from various eras of Skolimowski's career.
This Series is presented by the Northwest Forum in collaboration with the Harvard Film Archive, the Museum of the Moving Image and the Polish Cultural Institute in New York. Additional support comes from the Polish National Film Archive in Poland.
SEPTEMBER 9, FRIDAY AT 8PM
Seattle Premiere!
Four Nights With Anna
(Jerzy Skolimowski, 2008, Poland/France, 35mm, 87 min)
Skolimowski's first film after a seventeen year directing hiatus, Four Nights With Anna tells a small, intense, eerily one-sided love story. Leon, a crematorium worker, is in love with Anna. One night, he breaks in to clean her apartment while she sleeps. As he indulges his obsession by lingering among her belongings, he remembers a deeply troubling shared experience that casts new light on this already unsettling relationship. Skolimowski's expressionistic style elevate the film from a character study of an obsessive voyeur to the kind of art film that debuts in the Director's Fortnight at Cannes, heralding a triumphant comeback.
"A small gem, made with exceptional skill and command."Kenneth Turan, The Los Angeles Times
SEPTEMBER 10, SATURDAY AT 8PM
Seattle Premiere!
Essential Killing
(Jerzy Skolimowski, 2010, Poland/Norway/Ireland/Hungary, 35mm, 83 min) In the second film since his 17-year hiatus, Skolimowski takes a decidedly more frenetic. Essential Killing explores violence in the context of war, pitting an unusually silent Vincent Gallo (as escaped POW Mohammed) against a harsh winter in an unidentified European mountain range. Eschewing geopolitics, the film instead highlights the eternal question of what one human canor shoulddo to survive. Gallo's wordless performance earned him top honors at the film's debut in Venice, where Essential Killing also won the Special Jury Prize, the first time one film has taken two major awards from the festival. After 83 minutes spent with Skolimowski's relentless, brutal examination of isolated desperation, it is easy to see why.
"It's a savage film. It plays on our notions of good and evil."David Jenkins, Time Out London
SEPTEMBER 12, MONDAY AT 8PM
Seattle Premiere!
Identification Marks: None
(Jerzy Skolimowski, 1964, Poland, 35mm, 73 min)
Skolimowski scraped his first film together from bits and pieces of film he picked up during his coursework at the Lodz Film School, crafting an independent feature at the height of state-funded film. The first piece in an Antoine Doinel-style semi-autobiographical quartet, Identification Marks: None follows Andrej Leszczyc, an alienated and aimless student who must finally face the Polish draft board. Skolimowski himself plays the lead role in a subdued performance that gives a bleak view of life in communist Poland, fraught with boredom and mistrust. Already apparent in his first film is the hard-hitting, methodical style that characterizes his entire body of work and placed him at the center of the Polish New Wave.
"A bold and increasingly experimental catalogue of the frustrations of youth in postwar communist Poland."Anthony Paletta, The Wall Street Journal
SEPTEMBER 13, TUESDAY AT 8PM
Seattle Premiere!
Walkover
(Jerzy Skolimowski, 1965, Poland, 35mm, 77 min)
Skolimowski's follow-up to Identification Marks: None and the second in the Andrej Leszczyc quartet, Walkover highlights the more surreal, vaguely comedic aspects of life in 1960s Poland. It picks up Andrej's story a few years down the line, after his return from military service, while he is struggling to find a job. To make ends meet he boxes in amateur fights, selling his prizes. Still alienated and aimless, he drifts through fights and affairs with glum resignation, seemingly driven by nothing but resistance to mainstream life. Filmed with the same long takes and aggressive angles employed in Identification Marks: None and voiced over with Skolimowski's richly visual poetry, Walkover conveys the frustration and ennui of Skolimowski's own generation. Screens with three of Skolimowski's early shorts: The Menacing Eye (Oko wykol, 1960, 2 mins); Little Hamlet (Hamles, 1960, 8 mins); Erotique (Erotyk, 1960, 3 mins). (B&W, 35mm, From Polish National Film, Television, and Theatre School, Lodz, total running time 90min)
"Skolimowski's long takes are as exciting and distinctive as those of Kalatazovor Janscó."Chris Fujiwara, Moving Image Source
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