Success is the Best Revenge: The Films of Jerzy Skolimowski

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.

Series pass available: $20 Members / $30 General

 

Four Nights with Anna

Sep 09, 2011

(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.

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Essential Killing

Sep 10, 2011

(Jerzy Skolimowski, 2010, Poland/Norway/Ireland/Hungary, 35mm, 83 min)

 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 can—or should—do 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.

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Identification Marks: None

Sep 12, 2011

(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 is 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, which is fraught with boredom and mistrust. 

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Walkover

Sep 13, 2011

(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, where, struggling 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.

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)

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