Blood of a Poet: The Films of Lech Majewski
November 16, 2007 - December 2, 2007
A poet, painter, composer, video artist, and filmmaker, Lech Majewski is also, in the recent words of Washington Post critic Philip Kennicott, “a major discovery.” Whether based on legends or true events, grounded in both surrealist dreams and the inescapable atrocities of Central European reality, Majewski’s films merge cinema, prose, music, and art, sampling from the cinematic visions of Federico Fellini, Frantisek Vlácil, and Wojciech Has, the surrealist writings of Bruno Schulz, the stately arrangements of composers Henryk Gorecki and Philip Glass, and art movements as disparate as the Silesian mystics and Matthew Barney.
Born in Katowice, Poland, Majewski graduated from the influential Lodz Film School in 1977. After directing two films in his native Poland (including 1980’s The Knight), Majewski emigrated abroad, fashioning a career as diverse in locations as it is in disciplines. In addition to making films (often acting as cinematographer, composer, and production designer), Majewski has directed theater productions in the U.K., Germany, and Poland, helmed operas (including a 1995 Polish National Opera version of Bizet’s Carmen that was transmitted live by Canal+), written books (he’s published over thirteen volumes of poetry and prose), composed scores, and recently begun a series of video installation art.
Majewski will appear in person at several screenings. Please join us in welcoming “a brilliant filmmaker whose haunting aesthetic is formed of much deeper stuff, processed through a lively mind and idiosyncratic imagination, chastened and tempered by history, and captured on screen with the rigor and perfectionism of an artist who might also carve castles out of toothpicks” (Kennicott, Washington Post).
Jason Sanders
Associate Film Notes Writer
Friday, November 16, 2007
7:00 p.m. The Roe’s Room
Lech Majewski in Person. Emotions and sensations sing in this inspiring cinematic opera, set entirely inside a family apartment that slowly succumbs to nature. “One of a kind.”—Time Out
Friday, November 16, 2007
9:15 p.m. Glass Lips
Lech Majewski in Person. Majewski combines 33 short video-art pieces into one dreamlike work involving a poet, childhood, and memory. Like a Polish Cremaster Cycle, yet personal, political, and ultimately affecting.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
4:30 p.m. The Knight
Lech Majewski in Person. Majewski’s tale of medieval fury and faith is “beautiful, mystical.”—L.A. Times
Sunday, November 18, 2007
6:30 p.m. Angelus
Lech Majewski in Person. Fellini meets Tarkovsky in this gorgeous paean to eccentricity, set among coal-mining painters in Stalinist Poland.
Friday, November 30, 2007
7:00 p.m. Wojaczek
Majewski’s portrait of poet and provocateur Rafal Wojaczek, a Rimbaud for Iron Curtain–era Poland. “Black-and-white elegance. . . . Continually laugh-out-loud biopic.”—Village Voice
Friday, November 30, 2007
9:15 p.m. The Gospel According to Harry
A pre–Lord of the Rings Viggo Mortensen is adrift in a futuristic California suburb after the Pacific has turned to sand in Majewski’s Lynchian dystopia of ecology—and society—run amok.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
3:00 p.m. Basquiat
A poison-pen valentine to the early ’80s N.Y. art scene, as lived by doomed graffiti artist–turned–art star Jean-Michel Basquiat. Written by Majewski, directed by Julian Schnabel.
Series organized at PFA by Kathy Geritz.
PFA wishes to thank Wendy Lidell, International Film Circuit, for conceiving this retrospective. The touring series has been made possible with support from the Polish Film Institute and Silesia Film. 
