Athens International Film Festival
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Andrzej Zulawski: In Extremis

"It's not like in the movies or in books, where everything is precise, thought-out, organized, with a clear-cut goal. Everything's chaos, chance, pain, disorder."

The above quote, taken from "Mad Love", encompasses Andrzej Zulawski's cinematic universe and personal philosophy with surprising aptitude. Yet, through his radically disorganized version of reality, under the seemingly chaotic structure of his movies, hides a robust visual edifice, an absurdity constructed with surgical precision that captures the essence of the human condition more faithfully than sterile realism ever would.

Possibly because no other filmmaker has ever put his directorial virtuosity and every available film medium at the service of expressing emotions: raw, unconditional, domineering, self-destructive emotions. Passion, love, despair, jealousy, they're all captured on celluloid with manic energy and operatic grandeur, balancing between a rare visceral quality and overkill.

Lost souls on the cusp of the abyss, his heroes struggle with their imperfections, defy social conventions, clash with the system and battle their own passions and desires, just like he did. And the camera, like a living, breathing being, follows them into a vertiginous a free fall with no safety net.

A highly idiosyncratic case in the loins of world cinema, the unconventional Polish auteur walked the line between mainstream, art house and Avant-garde and never stopped breaking boundaries.

His filmography largely defies classification, despite the fact he probably tried his hand at every genre known to man - melodrama, horror film, science fiction, political allegory, gangster drama, period film and literary adaptations - transforming each and every one of them into something uniquely his own. Above and beyond cult, miles away from convention, his movies are a sui generis no-man's-land that can only be described in one world: Zulawski-esque!

Thanassis Patsavos

Φιλμογραφία / Filmography

2000 Fidelity
1996 Szamanka
1991 La Note Bleue
1989 Boris Godounov
1989 My Nights Are More Beautiful Than Your Days
1987 On the Silver Globe
1985 L' Amour Braque
1984 The Public Woman
1981 Possession
1975 That Most Important Thing: Love
1972 The Devil 1971 The Third Part of the Night



    Publication date: 2014-09-10 12:30:00