Sci-Fi Visionary: Piotr Szulkin Celebrates Certainly One Of Poland’s Most Revolutionary Filmmakers

“An Eastern European Ridley Scott… the commentary that is cultural of 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 vision and sociological absurdity.” – Steve Dollar, Wall Street Journal

Movie at Lincoln Center is 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 director, and painter, Piotr Szulkin frequently encountered censorship through the Polish Communist regime for the 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 create shockingly iconoclastic technology fiction movies. Referred to as “the undiscovered Fritz Lang of 1980s Mitteleuropa” (Michal Oleszczyk, RogerEbert.com), Szulkin made movies that have been seldom seen away from their native Poland but which continue steadily to resonate with chilling truths about humankind, drawing eerily prescient parallels to the present global climate that is political.

One of several biggest retrospectives of their strive up to now, Sci-Fi Visionary: Piotr Szulkin provides an array of brand new electronic restorations and brought in movie images. The show showcases most of Szulkin’s features, including their audacious cult classic Golem , usually considered a precursor to Blade Runner ; The War for the Worlds: Next Century, a reimagining regarding the H.G. Wells novel as well as an indictment of mass media’s impact on civilians; O-Bi, O-Ba: the termination of Civilization , which follows the rest of the survivors of the nuclear apocalypse from their dire situation; Szulkin’s exploration of female sexuality in the increasingly delirious and erotic Femina ; the dadaist Ga, Ga: Glory to Heroes , which follows a prisoner aboard a penitentiary spaceship as he is sent on a mission to a police state hell planet; and Szulkin’s final film, King Ubu , based on the 19th-century Albert Jarry play, a brutal commentary on contemporary Poland in the aftermath of the Communism Szulkin criticized throughout his career as they wait for a mythical Ark to save them. Also, the retrospective will emphasize Szulkin’s film that is short, such as the folklore-inspired morality play Dziewce z ciortem in addition to documentary Working Women .

Presented in collaboration because of the Polish Cultural Institute ny.

Organized by Florence Almozini and Tyler Wilson.

Tickets carry on sale Thursday, August 15 and tend to be $15; $12 for pupils, seniors (62+), and individuals with disabilities; and ten dollars for movie at Lincoln Center users. Save with all the purchase of three tickets or maybe more.

Acknowledgments: Polish Cultural Institute Ny; Daniel Bird

FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS All tests happen during the Walter Reade Theater (165 West 65th Street) unless otherwise noted.

Femina Poland, 1991, 35mm, 84m Polish with English subtitles After her husband leaves for a long company trip and her mother dies, a coolly detached, bourgeois housewife (Hanna Dunowska) embarks on an outre carnal odyssey looking 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 a lusty Joseph Stalin to a set of shockingly randy puppets—as it savages religion, their state, additionally the notion of the nuclear family members.

Preceded by: brand New electronic renovation Working Women / Kobiety pracujace Poland, 1978, 6m U.S. Premiere Stylized with dramatic interiors and a distorted frame price, this very 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 satire that is dystopian. In the next where life on the planet is now therefore wonderful that only prisoners are utilized for the high-risk company of area exploration, poker-faced intergalactic inmate Scope (Daniel Olbrychski) is sent for an apparently condemned objective to a planet that is uncharted. Upon their arrival, he discovers some sort of curiously like a dilapidated, postapocalyptic world, where he could be welcomed because of the population being a “hero,” an ignominious honor, he quickly learns, that is included with a many barbaric fate. Using the film’s properly nonsensical name from the babble of their child child, Szulkin provides a bleakly acerbic commentary from 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 certain dystopian future, boffins try to produce a fresh, flexible competition of people. an apparently ordinary item associated with the work, the genetically engineered Pernat (Marek Walczewski) is susceptible to round-the-clock monitoring while he goes about his life amidst drab bloc architecture that is soviet. Szulkin’s bold function first, styled in sepia tones and dramatic lighting, happens to be called a precursor to Blade Runner , but its name additionally appears returning to a more ancient misconception of creation and morality.

Preceded by: brand New electronic restoration The Gal plus the Fiend / Dziewce z ciortem Poland, 1976, 14m Polish with English subtitles legit ukrainian brides U.S. Premiere Szulkin stages a morality play about a sinful woman’s encounter using the devil, set into the Polish ballad of the identical title and imbued with folkloric imagery. Friday, September 6, 6:30pm Saturday, September 7, 2:00pm

New electronic restoration King Ubu / Ubu krol Poland, 2003, 90m Polish with English subtitles U.S. Premiere centered on Alfred Jarry’s late 19th-century, proto-Dada political satire Ubu Roi , Szulkin’s last 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 their own absurdist, tragicomic reign of terror. Upgrading Jarry’s iconoclastic eyesight with a new dosage of dark, post-Soviet cynicism, King Ubu is an incendiary summative statement from an musician whom devoted their profession to lobbing grenades in the equipment of totalitarian governmental corruption. Sunday, September 8, 6:00pm

Brand brand New electronic renovation O-Bi, 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. These are generally spurred in by their fervent belief in a fabled Ark that may deliver them from their residing hell—a myth propagated by the powers that be, and distribute, in component, because of the increasingly disillusioned smooth (Jerzy Stuhr) while he tries to push away collapse that is total. Doing work in an expressionistically grimy, grey- and palette that is blue-toned Szulkin crafts a shattering existential parable concerning the false claims of politics and faith that plays away such as a Sisyphean journey into madness. Saturday, September 7, 6:30pm Sunday, September 8, 4:00pm

Brand New electronic renovation The War regarding the Worlds: Next Century / Wojna swiatow – nastepne stulecie Poland, 1981, 96m Polish with English subtitles Dedicated to both H. G. Wells and Orson Welles, Szulkin’s followup to Golem starts because of the Christmastime takeover of Poland by a band of hyperintelligent, bloodthirsty martians (played by silver-painted dwarfs in puffer jackets) who enlist hapless television newscaster Iron Idem (Roman Wilhelmi) due to the fact sound of the 1984 -esque propaganda device. However when Iron dares to stop message, he makes an enemy also more than the aliens: the state it self. Released in the same way Poland was being plunged into martial legislation and immediately prohibited, The War regarding the Worlds: Next Century is really a disturbingly prescient allegory of energy, control, and news manipulation in a world that is post-truth. Friday, September 6, 9:00pm Sunday, September 8, 2:00pm