EPOS, The International Art Film Festival

The Mill and the Cross

Trailer

This film, mesmerizing in its beauty, is based on a painting titled The Procession to Calvary by Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The 16th-century masterpiece depicts Jesus bearing the cross on his way to Cavalry, where he is to be crucified, while at the same time creating a richly detailed world in which secondary characters and events effectively take center stage. Majewski has said that he first encountered Bruegel’s painting at a young age, was drawn into it, and returned again and again to the museum in Vienna where it is exhibited to study the composition’s infinite elements. Indeed, Majewski’s close scrutiny of the work was channeled into The Mill & the Cross, and his ability to breathe new life into Bruegel’s painting is nothing short of breathtaking. He transports the viewer into the painting, and transforms Bruegel’s two-dimensional work of art into a tangible reality. With his meticulous attention to detail, Majewski re-creates the tableau that Bruegel invented – the world in which the flourmill standing upright in the landscape represents life, and the broken man bearing the cross inches closer to death.

The Garden of Earthly Delights

Majewski adapted this film from a book he authored called Metaphysics, a great love story that begins with a man jumping from three bridges, one after another, in Venice. He isn’t attempting suicide, but rather fulfilling a promise he made to his beloved. The couple’s shared life unfolds in a film within this film, which the protagonist himself creates. She’s an art historian; he’s a maritime engineer writing a Ph.D. on gondola construction – they meet in London and it’s love at first sight. As in Majewski’s later film The Mill & the Cross, this one is also inspired by a monumental painting, in this case The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymous Bosch. The woman, who is younger than the man, guides him as they decipher a series of symbols in the painting that relate to their life together – and they experience and learn to truly understand passion by way of art. The Garden of Earthly Delights, which reveals Majewski’s extraordinary aesthetic perceptiveness, won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Rome International Film Festival.

Wojaczek

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Wojaczek is a portrait of Rafal Wojaczek, a poet of the post-World War II generation who came of age as Communism took over his homeland, Poland. After multiple suicide attempts, Wojaczek finally succeeded in taking his life at age 26, and in this existential film he is portrayed as a wanderer, a lost soul who can’t find his place in the world or obtain inner peace. While Majewski’s film is restrained, the young Wojaczek’s suffering is felt acutely. Krzysztof Siwczyk, himself a poet, plays the troubled artist, who rebelled at the height of his glory and refused to engage in the world around him despite having a lover and friends. Wojaczek never forged any real ties and constantly sought an escape, either through alcohol or attempted suicide. Majewski doesn’t offer up any psychological explanations; he simply brings the viewer into Wojaczek’s world – a world filmed in black and white that combines moments of sheer misery with those of transcendent beauty.

Beats of Freedom

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At the height of Polish resistance to Communism, the regime would plant young neo-Nazis at rock concerts to ruin the fun. When police arrived to break up fights, they didn’t expel the neo-Nazis, but instead got rid of anyone they had attacked. This is just one absurd episode from the history of Polish rock that is presented here in the socio-political context of Poland freeing itself from oppression. Rock music was an integral part of that revolution ­– not a decoration, not a form of rebellion for snot-nosed kids. The film offers a chronological overview of rock music’s part in the Polish struggle for liberation in the 1970s and ’80s. Some of the music is loud, angry and even unpleasant, but there’s no doubt it is an expression of true, heartfelt rage.

Themerson & Themerson

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Stefan and Franciszka Themerson couldn’t say when they first met, but after connecting they spent a lifetime together as artistic collaborators. His strength was in writing, while her preferred tool was a paintbrush. Jointly, they created everything from children’s books to avant-garde films ­– for which they are considered pioneers in their native Poland. Before World War II, the Themersons moved to Paris and, due to the war, were separated from one another for the only time in their lives. In 1942 they reunited in London, where they became important figures in the non-mainstream art world in the post-war years. The Themersons ran their own unique publishing house and were a magnet for other artists who looked up to them. The couple never became famous, but that seemed unimportant to them: They created art for themselves and for each other. After spending an hour and a half in their company, it’s easy to see why they were such an inspiration to many loving friends.