Sci-Fi Visionary: Piotr Szulkin Celebrates Certainly One Of Poland’s Most Revolutionary Filmmakers
“An Eastern European Ridley Scott… the cultural commentary of Szulkin’s oeuvre is universalist… their future is our now.” – Ela Bittencourt
“The Polish ‘cinema of anxiety’ soars from this globe into the work of Piotr Szulkin… the movies thrive on imaginative https://mailorderbrides.us vision and sociological absurdity.” – Steve Dollar, Wall Street Journal
Movie at Lincoln Center is very happy to announce Sci-Fi Visionary: Piotr Szulkin, a retrospective celebrating one of Poland’s many revolutionary filmmakers, September 6-8.
A manager, screenwriter, novelist, theatrical manager, and painter, Piotr Szulkin frequently encountered censorship through the Polish Communist regime of this belated ’70s and very very early ’80s for their unabashedly governmental works. Szulkin’s films that are profoundly imaginative be considered as existential stories, absurdist parables, or premonitions about contemporary society’s hostility together with evils of totalitarianism. Drawing from 20th-century philosophy and Polish medieval literary works through speculative fiction, noir, and grotesque allegories, Szulkin masterfully wielded the shoestring budgets afforded him to produce shockingly iconoclastic technology fiction films. Referred to as “the undiscovered Fritz Lang of 1980s Mitteleuropa” (Michal Oleszczyk, RogerEbert.com), Szulkin made movies which were rarely seen away from their indigenous Poland but which continue steadily to resonate with chilling truths about humankind, drawing eerily prescient parallels to the present global climate that is political.
Among the biggest retrospectives of their work up to now, Sci-Fi Visionary: Piotr Szulkin provides an array of brand brand new electronic restorations and brought in movie images. The show showcases most of Szulkin’s features, including their audacious cult classic Golem , frequently considered a precursor to Blade Runner ; The War of this Worlds: Next Century, a reimagining associated with the H.G. Wells novel plus an indictment of mass media’s impact on civilians; O-Bi, O-Ba: the finish of Civilization , which follows the residual survivors of the nuclear apocalypse because they await a mythical Ark to save lots of them from their serious situation; Szulkin’s exploration of feminine sex into the increasingly delirious and erotic Femina ; the dadaist Ga, Ga: Glory to Heroes , which follows a prisoner aboard a penitentiary spaceship while he is sent for a objective up to a authorities state hell earth; and Szulkin’s last movie, King Ubu , on the basis of the 19th-century Albert Jarry play, a brutal commentary on modern Poland within the aftermath associated with the Communism Szulkin criticized throughout their job. Furthermore, the retrospective will emphasize Szulkin’s quick movie work, like the folklore-inspired morality play Dziewce z ciortem plus the documentary Working Women .
Presented in collaboration using the Polish Cultural Institute ny.
Arranged by Florence Almozini and Tyler Wilson.
Tickets carry on sale Thursday, August 15 and generally are $15; $12 for pupils, seniors (62+), and people with disabilities; and ten dollars for movie at Lincoln Center users. Save with all the purchase of three seats or maybe more.
Acknowledgments: Polish Cultural Institute Nyc; Daniel Bird
FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS All tests occur during the Walter Reade Theater (165 western 65th Street) unless otherwise noted.
Femina Poland, 1991, 35mm, 84m Polish with English subtitles After her husband leaves for a protracted company trip and her mom dies, a coolly detached, bourgeois housewife (Hanna Dunowska) embarks on an outre carnal odyssey searching for intimate satisfaction, leading her into increasingly deranged, sinister realms as memories from fever-dream seductions to her childhood mingle. Equal components coming-of-age nightmare, softcore satire, and surrealist cantata, Szulkin’s delirious erotic fantasia unfurls in a nonstop rush of indelibly uncanny images—from a free-floating apparition of the lusty Joseph Stalin to a set of shockingly randy puppets—as it savages faith, hawaii, while the notion of the family that is nuclear.
Preceded by: brand brand brand New electronic renovation Working Women / Kobiety pracujace Poland, 1978, 6m U.S. Premiere Stylized with dramatic interiors and a distorted framework price, this very early documentary miniature from Szulkin illustrates six sequences of solitary, repetitious work. Saturday, September 7, 4:30pm Sunday, September 8, 8:00pm
Ga, Ga: Glory to Heroes / Ga, Ga – Chwala bohaterom Poland, 1986, 35mm, 84m Polish with English subtitles Resistance is useless in Szulkin’s stunningly nihilistic dystopian satire. In the next where life in the world has grown to become therefore wonderful that only prisoners can be used for the dangerous company of room research, poker-faced intergalactic inmate Scope (Daniel Olbrychski) is sent for a apparently condemned mission to an uncharted planet. Upon their arrival, he discovers some sort of curiously such as for instance a dilapidated, postapocalyptic world, where he could be welcomed by the population being a “hero,” an ignominious honor, he quickly learns, that accompany a many fate that is barbaric. Using the film’s accordingly nonsensical name from the babble of their infant child, Szulkin provides a bleakly acerbic commentary regarding the absurdity of life in an authorities state. Friday, September 6, 4:30pm Saturday, September 7, 8:30pm
brand New restoration that is digital Poland, 1980, 92m Polish with English subtitles in a few dystopian future, boffins make an effort to produce a fresh, flexible competition of people. a apparently ordinary product associated with the work, the genetically engineered Pernat (Marek Walczewski) is subject to round-the-clock monitoring as he goes about his life amidst drab bloc architecture that is soviet. Szulkin’s bold function first, styled in sepia tones and dramatic illumination, happens to be known as a precursor to Blade Runner , but its name also appears back again to a more ancient myth of creation and morality.
Preceded by: brand brand New restoration that is digital Gal additionally the Fiend / Dziewce z ciortem Poland, 1976, 14m Polish with English subtitles U.S. Premiere Szulkin stages a morality play about a sinful woman’s encounter with all the devil, set to your Polish ballad of the identical title and imbued with folkloric imagery. Friday, September 6, 6:30pm Saturday, September 7, 2:00pm
New electronic renovation King Ubu / Ubu krol Poland, 2003, 90m Polish with English subtitles U.S. Premiere According to Alfred Jarry’s late 19th-century, proto-Dada political satire Ubu Roi , Szulkin’s final movie is definitely a crazy, carnivalesque commentary on post-Communist Poland by which drunken degenerate Ubu (Jan Peszek) seizes control over the monarchy in a supposedly “democratic” takeover (their signature policy: universal free alcohol) simply to institute his or her own absurdist, tragicomic reign of terror. Upgrading Jarry’s iconoclastic eyesight with a brand new dosage of dark, post-Soviet cynicism, King Ubu can be an incendiary summative statement from an musician whom devoted their profession to lobbing grenades during the equipment of totalitarian corruption that is political. Sunday, September 8, 6:00pm
Brand brand New restoration that is digital, O-Ba: The End of Civilization / O-bi, O-ba – Koniec cywilizacji Poland, 1985, 88m Polish with English subtitles What stays of mankind post–nuclear apocalypse is restricted up to a squalid underground bunker where survivors toil desperately to uphold the very last vestiges of civilization. They have been spurred in by their fervent belief in a fabled Ark that may deliver them from their residing hell—a misconception propagated by the powers that be, and distribute, in component, by the increasingly disillusioned smooth (Jerzy Stuhr) as he tries to push away total collapse. Involved in an expressionistically grimy, grey- and blue-toned palette, Szulkin crafts a shattering existential parable concerning the false claims of politics and faith that plays down like a Sisyphean journey into madness. Saturday, September 7, 6:30pm Sunday, September 8, 4:00pm
Brand New electronic restoration The War associated with the Worlds: Next Century / Wojna swiatow – nastepne stulecie Poland, 1981, 96m Polish with English subtitles focused on both H. G. Wells and Orson Welles, Szulkin’s followup to Golem starts with the Christmastime takeover of Poland by a band of hyperintelligent, bloodthirsty martians (played by silver-painted dwarfs in puffer jackets) who enlist hapless tv newscaster Iron Idem (Roman Wilhelmi) since the sound of these 1984 -esque propaganda device. Nevertheless when Iron dares to set off message, he makes an enemy even higher than the aliens: the continuing state it self. Released in the same way Poland was being plunged into martial legislation and instantly prohibited, The War for the Worlds: Next Century is just a disturbingly prescient allegory of energy, control, and news manipulation in a post-truth globe. Friday, September 6, 9:00pm Sunday, September 8, 2:00pm
