Here’s the latest from the BFI
The BFI announces OUTSIDERS AND EXILES: THE FILMS OF JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI, a season that offers a rare opportunity to see the work of one of the world’s most remarkable filmmakers, whose career has spanned more than six decades. The season, which is curated by Michael Brooke, takes place at BFI Southbank from 27 March – 29 April, and is presented in partnership with the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival, which is organised by the Polish Cultural Institute and supported by the Polish Film Institute.
OUTSIDERS AND EXILES will include a special event, In Conversation with Jerzy Skolimowski, on 28 March at BFI Southbank. This event, hosted by Michael Brooke, will allow audiences to hear about what drives his creative passion and the working process that has resulted in his great international success, culminating in his recent Academy Award nomination for EO (2022), which is in cinemas UK- wide now, courtesy of BFI Distribution. There will also be a season introduction on 4 April from
curator Michael Brooke, along with guest speakers, in which they will explore Skolimowski’s long and varied career. Defying neat categorisation, Skolimowski has created a dynamic, provocative and acclaimed body of work that audiences will be able to discover on the big screen at BFI Southbank, while selected titles will also be released on BFI Player and on BFI Blu-ray, including feature debut IDENTIFICATION MARKS: NONE (1964) and the film that sent its director into a lengthy exile, HANDS UP! (1967/1981).
As long ago as 1968, Sight and Sound dubbed Jerzy Skolimowski ‘probably the most explosive and original filmmaker in Eastern Europe’, a claim which remains valid today, thanks to a career that’s been as wayward and inventive as any individual film. Broadly falling into three phases, Skolimowski’s career started in the 1960s, when he was described as a one-man Polish New Wave; a lengthy period of enforced exile in Britain and the US followed; and finally, a return to Poland and triumphant proof that he has lost none of the electrifying vigour that had so memorably charged his earlier work.
FILMS SCREENING IN THE SEASON
Made at the Łódź Film School, Skolimowski’s debut IDENTIFICATION MARKS: NONE (1964) introduced his freewheeling style and his alter ego Andrzej Leszczyc (played by the director not so much for egomania as guaranteed availability), who spends a final day of freedom before compulsory military service tying up some loose ends. Having completed military service, Andrzej Leszczyc (played again by Skolimowski) returns in WALKOVER (1965) with few achievements to point to, aside from a certain flair for boxing, which at least gives him something concrete – if fleeting – to fight for. Inspired as much by jazz improvisations and Skolimowski’s own poetry (quoted extensively) as any cinematic models, the filmmaker’s second feature cemented his growing reputation as a one-man Polish New Wave. The screening of WALKOVER of 29 March will be followed by a Q&A with Jerzy Skolimowski. Skolimowski’s alter ego returns for a final bow in HANDS UP! (1967/1981) as one of five thirtysomething former colleagues whose reunion, taking place in an abandoned railway wagon, becomes a sombre reflection on both Poland’s past and possible future. It proved too near the knuckle for the communist authorities, who not only banned it but also sent its director into a lengthy exile. As well as screening in the season at BFI Southbank, IDENTIFICATION MARKS: NONE and HANDS UP! will be released as a double disc BFI Blu-ray on 24 April and be available to watch on BFI Player from 3 July.
In BARRIER (1966) a newly graduated medical student (Jan Nowicki) attempts to make sense of the modern world. Taking the themes of previous films and turning them up to eleven in terms of their ferociously imaginative treatment, Skolimowski attracted well-earned comparisons with Godard and
Antonioni, although he remained very much his own man. The screening of BARRIER on 4 April will be introduced by season curator Michael Brooke. Skolimowski’s affinity with the French New Wave was at its most apparent in his first non-Polish film, LE DÉPART (1967), not least because it starred the iconic Jean-Pierre Léaud (THE 400 BLOWS, MASCULINE FEMININE) as a hairdresser’s apprentice dreaming of being a champion racing driver. Steeped in mid-1960s pop culture and scored by the Polish jazz master Krzysztof Komeda, it rivals Richard Lester’s Beatles films for sheer effervescence. LE DÉPART will also be available to watch on BFI Player from 3 April.
For the three-part experimental feature DIALOGUE 20-40-60 (1968), Skolimowski and Czechoslovak directors Peter Solan (BEFORE TONIGHT IS OVER) and Zbyněk Brynych (THE FIFTH HORSEMAN IS FEAR) each take exactly the same dialogue but stage their individual contributions with people from different generations. Skolimowski directed the first part, involving a twentysomething couple played by his wife Joanna Szczerbic and Jean-Pierre Léaud. It will screen alongside short films LITTLE HAMLET (1960), THE MENACING EYE (1960), YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE (1961) and EROTIC (1961) that Skolimowski made
at the Łódź Film School, which reveal an instinctive film sense that was almost fully formed from the start. A darkly comic coming of age story, DEEP END (1970) pulls few psychological punches in charting the infatuation of a teenage swimming-pool attendant and his slightly older colleague. Darkly comic and utterly compelling, Skolimowski paints a compelling portrait of Britain in an era of uncertainty. The screening of DEEP END on 24 April will be a relaxed screening for those in the neurodiverse community, which will be hosted by Lillian Crawford. The film is also available on BFI Blu-Ray and DVD and will be on BFI Player from 3 April.
Conceived as a Nicolas Roeg project, THE SHOUT (1978) is an eerie adaptation of Robert Graves’ story that proved a perfect fit for Skolimowski, thanks to his ability to make things seem both quintessentially English and deeply strange. Alan Bates is on superlative form as a mysterious stranger tantalising with tales of shamanic powers acquired in the Australian outback, including a shout that can kill. The screening of THE SHOUT on 28 March will be introduced by Jerzy Skolimowski and the film is also available to rent on BFI Player now. Skolimowski rarely tackled overtly political subjects, but the December 1981 declaration of martial law in Poland inspired one of his most heartfelt films, MOONLIGHTING (1982) about a group of Polish builders working in London. Only Nowak (Jeremy Irons), the sole English speaker, knows about martial law being declared back home, and hides it from his workmates in order to get the job finished. The screening of MOONLIGHTING on 29 March will be introduced by Jerzy Skolimowski and the film is also available on BFI Player from 3 April. Skolimowski’s only wholly American film, THE LIGHTSHIP (1985), is the closest that he came to a full-blown genre
piece, but it’s just as slyly subversive as the rest of his canon; it follows the captain of a stationary lightship whose fervently pacifist views are challenged when he and his crew are taken hostage by a trio of criminals.
Skolimowski returned to directing after a nearly two-decade hiatus with FOUR NIGHTS WITH ANNA (2008), a quietly unsettling study of a lonely ex-convict who expresses his infatuation with his neighbour by repeatedly drugging her so that he can clean her house while she sleeps – for deep- seated reasons that only gradually emerge. With even less dialogue than his latest film EO, the multiple award winning ESSENTIAL KILLING (2010) is the closest Skolimowski came to purely visual cinema. Mohammed (Vincent Gallo) is transported from his sun-seared homeland to a temporary detention centre in wintry Poland. He escapes and struggles to stay alive in a terrifyingly unfamiliar environment, where his appearance automatically sees him labelled as a potentially dangerous terrorist. ESSENTIAL KILLING will also be available to watch on BFI Player from 3 April. Skolimowski’s formidable conceptual and technical skills get their most intensive workout in 11 MINUTES (2015), as initially unconnected stories gradually and then emphatically come together. The film is so formally virtuosic that serious themes about surveillance and technology play second fiddle to the pleasure of watching a master filmmaker at work. 11 MINUTES will be available on BFI Player from 3 April.
Skolimowski’s latest film EO (2022), which is currently in cinemas UK-wide courtesy of BFI Distribution and will be released exclusively on BFI Player and BFI DVD and Blu-ray from 3 April, is a vividly realised homage to Robert Bresson’s AU HASARD BALTHAZAR and an original work in its own right. On its journey through life, a donkey with melancholic eyes and a fondness for carrots experiences joy and pain, with the wheel of fortune randomly turning his luck into disaster and his despair into unexpected bliss. Brilliantly shot and featuring immersive sound design, the film ponders the follies of humanity while never resorting to sermonising, and reminds viewers of Skolimowski’s immense contribution to world cinema, which can be seen back on the big screen at BFI Southbank during this season.
OUTSIDERS AND EXILES: THE FILMS OF JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI is at BFI Southbank from 27 March – 29 April
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