We fell in love with Bogdan Dziworski’s incredible, immersive, sensorially rich documentaries and knew we had to present a program of a few of our favorites if at all possible! Check out Zena’s trailer above to get a sense of the images and sounds in these amazing films – his audiovisual language as a filmmaker is hypercinematic, artfully stylized, wonderfully playful, and even frequently daring. We know Dziworski’s work may not be very well known in the US, and perhaps even his name obscure to many, but we VERY highly recommend giving this program a chance, as these are unforgettable films that are intensely creative, involving, artful, and quite fun. Dziworski also loves people, and his engagement with his subjects communicates a visceral, empathic connection that elevates the films even further. Hope to see you there!
Tickets here: https://link.dice.fm/Saccab63e6d2
Here’s the official spiel from our program announcement to give you a bit more encouragement!
With their wildly adventurous cinematography, editing, and sound, the short documentaries of Polish film virtuoso Bogdan Dziworski create a thrillingly immersive space for an intensely engaged, experiential approach to their subject matter, decades before Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab films would seek to do something quite similar. Graduating from the famed Łódź film school in 1965, Dziworski pioneered a revelatory language of observational nonfiction filmmaking that eschewed all claims to fly-on-the-wall realism and instead transparently engaged in an often surrealist and unequivocally stylized film language, seeking to enhance his subjects with a heightened, eccentric sensoriality that only cinema can offer.
While Dziworski’s editing is sculptural and kinetic, and his cinematography operatic and daring, his sound work is particularly extensive, using unconventional cutting and mixing techniques, and an elaborate approach to foley that guides our engagement just as powerfully as the visuals. These are documentaries unlike any others: deeply empathetic, uncommonly strange constructions that are exhilaratingly, unapologetically cinematic.
In recent years, we fell in love with Dziworski’s fantastic films, and are very excited to present a selection of four of our favorites as part of Lightstruck. The program includes: Skiing Scenes with Franz Klammer (1980), his hilarious and visually outrageous collaboration with Zbig Rybczyński and Gerald Kargl (Angst); Classical Biathlon (1978), one of his most expressive and immersive athletic films; A Few Stories About a Man (1983), a remarkable portrait of Jerzy Orłowski, armless graphic artist, in various typical and atypical sequences; and Szapito (1984), a moving and exquisitely sensitive film in which a retired circus troupe assembles to recreate some of their long ago routines. We hope you’ll join us to experience these intricate, artful, and – quite frankly – massively entertaining films, still incredibly fresh and cinematically adventurous 40+ years after their making.
Program by Zena Grey and Mark Toscano. Notes by Mark Toscano. Thanks to Marek Pelski at WFO Film Studio for providing the films.
LIGHTSTRUCK 