Love Express. The Strange Case of Walerian Borowczyk
How does a film director get from making art house cinema to softporn movies? From acclaimed artist to pornographer? From genius to troublemaker? Love Express is a documentary film essay, an investigation trying to solve the riddle of one of the most puzzling career twists in 20th century European cinema – high-brow critical favorite Walerian Borowczyk’s alleged plunge into pornography, exploitation and overall depravity. Borowczyk’s fall from critical grace was as spectacular as it was sudden. In the 1970’s he was hailed alongside Buñuel, Fellini and Bresson as one of the greatest visionaries of European cinema, celebrated for his wildly inventive animated shorts and meticulously staged live-action films. In the 1980s, labelled "arty-pornographer" and largely dismissed by reviewers, he ended his career as the director of late-night TV erotic series, while hopelessly trying to launch numerous new feature film projects.Set to untangle Borowczyk’s dwindling reputation, Love Express highlights major shifts in European attitudes towards sexuality, censorship and counterculture, which occurred at the turn of 1970s and 80s – and to a large extent shaped contemporary cultural milieu. It is a story about a mad filmmaker on a crash course with critics, society and emerging art house industry. About an artist, who fights and loses the battle with his critical image.
Reporter
REPORTER is a visual found footage portrait of a writer and reporter. It explores the life of Ryszard Kapuściński, an icon of journalism and non-fiction literature. It is an essay about the writer’s creative process, his failures and accomplishments. It is a cinematic collage of images covering his journalistic assignments of postcolonial Africa, the South American coup d'états, the Iranian religious revolution, the Solidarity movements and the collapsing Soviet Union. The film recalls the significance of journalistic personal engagement. It presents the figure of the Polish writer whose reflections guide many today, in the era of information chaos, excess and superfluity.We follow the reporter’s path trough archival interviews while his voice recordings lead the film towards his personal reflections. The audiocassettes discovered in his studio’s drawers several years after his death, enable us to understand his writing process and travel difficulties as well as his dealings with the communist regime. We can hear Kapuściński’s notes taken on the airplane on his departure for Africa. We follow his impressions during a night boat trip to a Senegalese island. We can imagine his desperation in Siberia and the loneliness of being far from home. The archival scratches and grains give the film the feel of journalistic authenticity and at the same time give the images the traits of a nostalgic fable. The first person narration, archival footage along with contemporary images, composes a self-portrait diary of a man and his times.