Pioneers and Masters

A tour through the must-sees of Polish animation presented by Olga Bobrowska and Michael Bobrowski.

Program:

DOM (HOUSE, Walerian Borowczyk, Jan Lenica, 1958, 12´)
House was the last film by Borowczyk and Lenica, two great artists who together revolutionized the creative process and perception of animated film. This work combines mixed animation techniques with live-action stills. An unconventional audiovisual experiment that reveals the complex psychology of the human being.

KONFLIKTY (CONFLICTS, Daniel Szczechura, 1960, 7´)
Conflicts is the first film by Daniel Szczechura, an artist whose name is associated with the greatest successes of Polish animation in the 1960s. Made using the cut-out method and it was hailed as a masterpiece, the cut-out technique revolutionised the animated film, made animation more sophisticated, and opened it up to more serious topics.

KLATKI (CAGES, Mirosław Kijowicz, 1966, 7´)
An ambiguous relationship of an inmate and his jailer serves as a subversive allegory of the power relations. This film is considered an exemplary work of the 1960s philosophical animation tendency where the strong punch sums up a metaphorical and contemplative narrative.

SŁODKIE RYTMY (SWEET RHYTHMS, Kazimierz Urbański, 1965, 6´)
Combining live-action documentary footage and abstract animation, it is an exercise in the possibility of a kinetic art ("kineplastyka"). The director said: "(…) the condition of filmmaking (…) is the ability to find the material and explore the movement that is intrinsically tied to it."

SCHODY (STAIRS, Stefan Schabenbeck, 1968, 7´)
A powerful in its simplicity, puppet parable of a human condition. A man climbs never-ending stairs, this intrinsically Sisyphean endeavor exhausts his mind and fatigues the body. In the context of the political darkness of 1968 in Poland it stands as a pessimistic testimony of its times.

BANKIET (THE BANQUET, Zofia Oraczewska, 1976, 8´)
Ladies and Gentlemen, the table is set but beware of your gluttonous neighbor. It is a dark satire on consumerism and egocentricism developed in the poetics of a fairytale. Zofia Oraczewska is one of a few women who have advanced in animation directing career during the socialist period.

TANGO (Zbigniew Rybczyński, 1980, 8´)
It takes a lot more than two to tango this tango. A symbolic picture of human fate is made with animated photographs. The film won an Oscar. Rybczyński's wild imagination mixed with his technical and technological interests made him a hero for creators such as Michel Gondry.

WOLNOŚĆ NOGI (FREEDOM OF THE LEG, Piotr Dumała, 1988, 10´)
Grotesque and absurd, animated freestyle on the subject of horizons and limits of individual freedom. One night a leg leaves a body and sets on a journey. The film combines painting, direct animation (celluloid scratched with a needle) and plaster board technique.

MILEŃKA (Joanna Jasińska-Koronkiewicz, 2001, 4´)
An award-winning student film of a currently one of the essential pedagogues at the Film School in Lodz. Inspired by the Chagallian surrealist style, the film's images that were painted and cut-out, float along the sounds of the folk song "Oi Divchino" performer by the band The Ukrainians.

PORTRET KONIA (HORSE PORTRAIT, Witold Giersz, 2023, 5´)
This films innovatively expands on visual motifs present already in Witold Giersz's 1967 masterpiece Horse. First, single, then more and more colorful brush spots appear on the black background. After some time, the rhythmically moving spots create an amorphous outline of a galloping horse.

> Suitable for all audiences.