Walerian Borowczyk
Walerian Borowczyk was an internationally known Polish film director described by film critics as a 'genius who also happened to be a pornographer'. He directed 40 films between 1946 and 1988. Borowczyk settled in Paris in 1959. As a film director he worked mainly in France.
Biography
Born in Kwilcz near Poznań, Borowczyk studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, then devoted himself to painting and lithography, including the creation of posters for the cinema, which earned him a national prize in 1953. His early films were surreal animations, some only a few seconds long, including several comic abecedaria. His most acclaimed early films were Był sobie raz and Dom .near Paris where the artist lived his last thirty years
In 1959, Borowczyk immigrated to France and settled in Paris. He worked with Chris Marker for Les Astronautes. Major works of this period include the stop motion film Renaissance, which uses reverse motion to depict various destroyed objects re-assembling themselves, only to be destroyed again when the last object is complete, and the nightmarish Jeux des anges, selected by Terry Gilliam as one of the ten best animated films of all time. In 1967, he directed his first animated feature film, Théâtre de Monsieur & Madame Kabal: un film dessiné pour les adultes.
Borowczyk moved into live-action feature film with Goto, l'île d'amour and Blanche, both tales of illicit love thwarted by jealous husbands, and both starring his own wife, Ligia Branice. One of his most appreciated films of this period, Dzieje grzechu , which was nominated for Palme d'or, is an adaptation of a Polish literary classic by Stefan Żeromski. Like his 1966 short film Rosalie, Dzieje grzechu had successfully rendered the themes of seduction and infanticide. Contes immoraux and his later work, including Interno di un convento and Cérémonie d'amour have been controversial, lauded by some for their unique surrealist vision and derided by others as contentless pornography. Especially, La Bête was seen by many as a decline in the director's career after Dzieje grzechu, except in France, where it was hailed by prominent critics such as Ado Kyrou. His 1980 film Lulu was based on the eponymous character created by Frank Wedekind.
In 1981, he made Docteur Jekyll et les femmes, a version of the Jekyll and Hyde story starring Udo Kier and Patrick Magee and depicting Jekyll's transformation as a violent rebellion against the Victorian morality. In his 1988 book Nightmare Movies, Kim Newman described the film as "dark, misanthropic and interestingly offensive". He made a brief return to animation with his 1984 short film Scherzo infernal. In 1987, he directed Emmanuelle 5, an installment of the Emmanuelle series, that was also released in a hardcore video-only version. He was unhappy with the project due to a dispute concerning the casting of lead actress Monique Gabrielle. In 1988 and 1990, he directed four episodes for the series Série rose: Les Chefs d’œuvre de la littérature érotique on M6.
Many of Borowczyk's films use historical settings, including Ars Amandi: l'arte di amare , set in the time of Ovid ; Blanche, set during the Middle Ages; and three of the four episodes in Contes immoraux, set respectively in the nineteenth century, the sixteenth century, and the Borgia papacy.
A number of his films in Contes immoraux, the 1976 La Marge, the episode Marceline in Les Héroïnes du mal: Margherita, Marceline, Marie were based on stories by André Pieyre de Mandiargues. A less usual product of this cooperation was Une collection particulière of 1973, a representation of Borowczyk's collection of pornographic items, with Mandiargues having written the narration.
Borowczyk was the author of two books; Anatomia diabła and Moje polskie lata .
He died of heart failure in Paris in 2006, aged 82.
Filmography
;Film| Title | Year | Director | Writer | Other | English Title | Notes |
| Renesans | "Renaissance" | |||||
| Théâtre de Monsieur & Madame Kabal | Production designer | "Mr. and Mrs. Kabal's Theatre" | ||||
| Goto, l'île d'amour | "Goto, Island of Love" | Songwriter: "L'hymne national de Goto" | ||||
| Blanche | Editor & production designer | "Blanche" | ||||
| Contes immoraux | Editor & production designer | "Immoral Tales" | ||||
| La Bête | Editor | "The Beast" | ||||
| Dzieje grzechu | Actor | "The Story of Sin" | Uncredited role | |||
| La Marge | "The Margin" or "The Streetwalker" | |||||
| Interno di un convento | Editor | "Behind Convent Walls" | ||||
| Les héroïnes du mal | "Immoral Women" | |||||
| Collections privées | "Private Collections" | Segment: "L'armoire" | ||||
| Lulu | Production designer | "Lulu" | ||||
| Docteur Jekyll et les femmes | Production designer | "Dr. Jekyll and his Women", "Blood of Dr. Jekyll", "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne" | ||||
| Ars amandi | Editor & cinematographer | "The Art of Love" | ||||
| Emmanuelle 5 | "Emmanuelle 5" | |||||
| Cérémonie d'amour | "Love Rites" |
Accolades
- Nominated: BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film — Dom
- Won: Special Jury Award for Best Short Film — Le concert de M. et Mme. Kabal
- Won: Special Mention Award for Best Short Film — Rosalie
- Won: Silver Berlin Bear for Best Short Film — Rosalie
- Won: Special Jury Prize — Rosalie
- Won: Interfilm Award — Théâtre de Monsieur & Madame Kabal
- Won: Interfilm Grand Prix — Blanche
- Nominated: Palme d'Or — Dzieje grzechu
- Won: Maria Award for Best Director — Docteur Jekyll et les femmes