{"id":3073,"date":"2015-04-06T14:54:51","date_gmt":"2015-04-06T14:54:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/notofu.com\/home\/?p=3073"},"modified":"2015-04-06T14:54:51","modified_gmt":"2015-04-06T14:54:51","slug":"erotica-and-subversion-the-films-of-walerian-borowczyk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/notofu.com\/new\/erotica-and-subversion-the-films-of-walerian-borowczyk\/","title":{"rendered":"Erotica and Subversion: The Films of Walerian Borowczyk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps the best description of master eroticist filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk’s \u00a0is that of a “genius who was also a pornographer.” An apt description of a man who, throughout his prolific film career that spanned over four decades, directed over 40 films that have come to inhabit the cult pornography canon. Yet ‘pornography’ is also not the most accurate descriptor for Borowczyk’s work, as his films were always more than simple carnal pleasures devoid of intrinsic merit.<\/p>\n

Borowczyk trained as a sculptor at the Academy of Arts in post-World War II Krakow and subsequently devoted himself to film, starting out with animated features before casting his own mold in erotic cinema. His first features were ingenious animated excursions in cartoon art\u2014crudely executed,\u00a0infused with absurdist messages and sly humor. But his big break came with 1958’s Dom <\/em>(House, 1958), whom he co-produced with\u00a0fellow graphic designer Jan Lenica. Through its combination of realism, retro and the abstract,\u00a0Dom<\/em>\u00a0was a masterful success for Borowczyk that stood proudly above anything that was out at the time. After Dom<\/em>,\u00a0Borowczyk moved to Paris, where he went on to\u00a0became the most significant Polish artist working in postwar France. It is France where Borowczyk starting dabbling in fiction: His first foreign endeavor was\u00a0Les Astronautes<\/em> (The Astronauts, 1959), an\u00a0adaptation of Stanis\u0142aw Lem\u2019s 1951 novel of the same name. For The Astronauts<\/em>, Borowczyk borrowed from his earlier work, but evolved in his use of electronic music and cut-up collage imagery, which became more technically polished. This was followed by his first feature films, which included\u00a0Goto, l\u2019\u00eele d\u2019amour<\/em> (Goto, Island of Love, 1968), which tackled themes of lust, power and oppression.<\/p>\n

These themes became more prevalent, and more obsessive, to Borowczyk\u00a0in the coming years. His feature films\u00a0visited\u00a0themes of\u00a0desire, sexuality, death, religion and obsession. Borowczyk\u2014or Boro, as he’s affectionately nicknamed\u2014began evoking sexuality in way that was less subtle than, say, the work of Luis Bu\u00f1uel, an auteur who was a major influence on Borowczyk. His later films titillated,provoked, and shocked.<\/p>\n

His\u00a0best-known film, La B\u00eate<\/em> (The Beast, 1975), opens with an explicit scene of horses mating. It is an unexpected image that sets the tone for a movie that\u00a0plays like an erotic farce of frantic fantasies of bestial sexual submission with tones of political commentary reminescent of Bu\u00f1uel’s bourgeoisie smack-downs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Immoral
Immoral Tales, 1974<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Beast<\/em> is an exploitation flick, a brazenly provocative one, yet Borowczyk’s fascination lied\u00a0with\u00a0the movement of sexuality, not with\u00a0sex as an end. Movies that followed, Immoral Tales<\/em>, Immoral Women<\/em>\u00a0and Behind Convent Walls<\/em>\u00a0tackled sexuality in a similar way: through graphic themes of nunspolitation, revenge, desire and corruption.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Behind
Behind Convent Walls, 1978<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Throughout his work, Borowczyk’s approach to portraying women has remained\u00a0equally fascinating.\u00a0His heroines aren’t damzels in distress, nor are they delicate daisies in search for sexual liberation. They are true “heroines of evil”, fully-formed sexual protagonists aware of their sexual maturity and how they can go about fulfilling it.<\/p>\n

This week, the Lincoln Society Film Center is celebrating Borowcyk’s career through a retrospective of his work: running through April 9th, the retrospective, titled Obscure Pleasures: The Films of Walerian Borowczyk<\/em>,
\nwill air all of Borowcyk’s most famous feature length movies with multiple screenings per day.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"article00\"<\/p>\n

 
\nObscure Pleasures: The Films of Walerian Borowczyk<\/em> runs through April 9 at the Lincoln Society Film Center in New York. For tickets, see here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perhaps the best description of master eroticist filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk’s \u00a0is that of a “genius who was also a pornographer.” An apt description of a man who, throughout his prolific film career that spanned over four decades, directed over 40 films that have come to inhabit the cult pornography canon. Yet ‘pornography’ is also not the most accurate descriptor for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3076,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[25],"tags":[157,158],"class_list":["post-3073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-pornography","tag-walerian-borowczyk"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paoQFa-Nz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/notofu.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/notofu.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/notofu.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notofu.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notofu.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/notofu.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notofu.com\/new\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/notofu.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notofu.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notofu.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}