Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection

[MichaelB]

Technically, it's only half of a film career that spanned 1957-91, but the bulk of his best stuff will certainly be in the box - there were certainly plenty of flashes of brilliance post-1975, but nothing that comes close to matching the achievement of Goto, Blanche and the shorts.

The most serious omissions are the Polish shorts from 1957-8, which I'm very sorry we couldn't include - in fact, I debated chopping a lengthy analysis of his breakthrough short Dom (1958) out of a big Film Comment piece by Raymond Durgnat that's being included in the book, but then thought that this would be overkill. (The same piece has similarly exhaustive - almost frame-by-frame at times - studies of Renaissance and Les Jeux des Anges).

[swo17]

Though Dom, Szkoła, Byl sobie raz, and Sztandar młodych are available on those two essential PWA Polish animation sets.

[antnield]

Video: Restoring Goto, Isle of Love.

[Finch]

The colour footage especially looks sensational.

[MichaelB]

We were worried that we might have to fall back on a 16mm source for that, but 35mm materials came to light in time. They weren't in great condition physically, but the shots are so brief that the restorers were able to really go to town on them.

[kidc85]

Slight OT but any Londoners interested in a ticket to see JEKYLL at the BFI tonight? I suddenly have a spare ticket.

[MichaelB]

Slight OT but any Londoners interested in a ticket to see JEKYLL at the BFI tonight? I suddenly have a spare ticket.

I hear it's either sold out or come very close.

[MichaelB]

Last week's live hour-long Resonance FM radio discussion on Walerian Borowczyk is now available online, featuring yours truly as one of the guests.

[pricey]

I'm a new member to this forum, and this thread has motivated me to register. Can't wait for this box set to come out, as Borowczyk is one of my favourite filmmakers.

Not sure if it is any use to Micheal B, or whoever is putting together the Booklet for the set, but recently I came across an old German arts magazine ('Bildende Kunst') from 1956 that has an article called 'Die Junge Generation', and features a reproduction of a Lithograph by the young Borowczyk. Its quite interesting as it is an image of Lenin rendered in very dark blacks, suggesting something rather subversive clearly under the radar of a GDR approved magazine.
Drop me a message if you want a high res scan.

[JonathanBohman]

I'd like to alert you to a Borowczyk event I have organised, happening next Tuesday at Cafe Oto, Dalston , London
http://www.cafeoto.co.uk/octothorpe-bor ... ronte.shtm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
which features music and sounds from 'Goto','Blanche', 'The Beast' and 'Jekyll' played by Aleks Kolkowski, The Dufay Collective and my trio. In addition, there will be a screening of four shorts: 'Renaissance', 'The Concert', 'Grandma's Encyclopedia' and 'Diptych'.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

This is probably aimed principally,but not exclusively,at MichaelB but I have been on a Bernie Parmegiani spree lately and was wondering what the status re Borowczyk's video contribution to L'Oeil Ecoute is ? Also Is the snippet on the Boro Encyclopedia re their relationship the full extent of the content on the box or can we look forward to more ?

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Paging MichaelB.....Sorry to ring the bell again so soon after the last post, but after trawling around looking for more background to the Parmegiani - Borowczyk relationship I came across this Australian festival 'Concrete Cinema' http://archive.today/aHfTV" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The 25 minute video piece L'Oeil écoute is credited solely to Parmegiani but I thought I had read that Boro supplied the video material. Do you know what the actual situation was?

[Adam X]

Nabob, thanks for the link. The Melbourne-originating, almost Australia-wide sound art festival Liquid Architecture is a really great annual event for anyone interested in sound art. Skimming through the linked essay, about halfway down, it does indeed state that Borowczyk contributed footage to the work, though states it was directed by Parmigiani.

Borowczyk also contributed footage to a work of Parmegiani's own Direction - an experiment in synaesthesia, scored by one of Parmegiani's most evocative compositions, The Eye Hears. The Eye Hears is one of three video art pieces Parmegiani produced within the GRM; a vigorous montage to match what is one of his most powerful and dramatic electronic compositions. Among the GRM composers, Parmegiani was the most prolific at scoring films (in the eleven years to 1970, his screen credits include 44 shorts, 1 feature and one natural history documentary series!) and his own videos are perhaps the clearest articulation of his approach to soundtracking. While The Eye Hears is an exploration of audio/image analogues, The Transparent Screen, of 3 years later, is a more complex and studied piece on the nature of mediated reality, a gestural interpretation of McLuhan in mime.

[What A Disgrace]

My schedule for September is gonna be a little tight, but I really want to watch this set in that time. I know this is an unusual request, but is there any way to find out the running time of the supplements on the set, or is that something we'll just have to wait for?

[MichaelB]

I'll know very soon, but the final running times are still being locked down as I write this.

[billfitzgerald]

Here's a little more information about "L’œil écoute" taken from various books. I've never seen the video mentioned in any Borowczyk filmographies, but it is mentioned in the catalog of works in the book Bernard Parmegiani Portraits Polychromes. 2 versions of the video are listed in the book, the first directed by Borowczyk, and a second version directed by Parmegiani. Parmegiani also mentions in an interview in the book that his version of of the video is based on pictures that Borowczyk took of Parmegiani's eye.

In the book Walerian Borowczyk edited by Pascal Vimenet there is a photo of a samovar and a metal case sitting on a wooden table (looking similar to the film "Le Phonographe") that is credited to have some possible connection to "L’œil écoute"

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Thanks for this info and Adam too for looking more thoroughly than I did. Would have been nice to have seen this included in the box but mustn't grumble it's packed to the gills with goodness already.

[MichaelB]

Not sure if it is any use to Micheal B, or whoever is putting together the Booklet for the set, but recently I came across an old German arts magazine ('Bildende Kunst') from 1956 that has an article called 'Die Junge Generation', and features a reproduction of a Lithograph by the young Borowczyk. Its quite interesting as it is an image of Lenin rendered in very dark blacks, suggesting something rather subversive clearly under the radar of a GDR approved magazine.
Drop me a message if you want a high res scan.

Sorry to take so long to get back to you, but I've only just got the complete set of stills that we're featuring in the book - and that image is not only included but discussed in the text.

It's part of Borowczyk's Nowa Huta lithographic cycle, created in 1953 at a time when Polish artists were supposed to produce nothing but Socialist Realism - but, as you say, he's clearly not playing entirely by the rules.

But thanks for the offer!

[MichaelB]

I watched the hour-long The Making of The Beast last night, and can safely say that anyone who struggled through the 105-minute completely silent assembly of on-set 16mm footage on earlier DVD releases is going to love it.

Virtually all the running time is made up of the same footage (albeit with the dead wood removed and the rest rescanned to HD), but the crucial difference is that it's now in a more coherent order (as with the Charles Laughton Directs 'The Night of the Hunter' documentary, it's now in the order in which the scenes occur in the film as opposed to the long-forgotten shooting schedule), intertitles have been added to aid orientation and - most crucially of all - camera operator Noël Véry has been roped in to add a commentary (in English) that's sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, especially when he's trying to redub Borowczyk attempting to direct an uncooperative cat. There are also a couple of stills from the shooting of the dream scene, which was filmed two years earlier and therefore not documented on 16mm.

[MichaelB]

The Borowczyk box has officially sold out. Arrow has just posted this on Facebook:

***CAMERA OBSCURA UPDATE***

It now looks as if we have completely sold out of this title! What this means is that all stock is allocated to each retailer based on your pre-orders, which means that each will likely have a small amount of stock available. If you have ALREADY pre-ordered this title from us or a retailer such as Amazon your pre-order has been confirmed and you WILL receive a copy of the set. If you have yet to pre-order there is no guarantee you will receive a copy.

If at any point we discover that more stock is available (some retailers may return unsold stock at a later date) this will go back on sale via the Arrow Store.

We would like to send our thanks to everybody that has pre-ordered this title and backed our Kickstarter and hope you all enjoy the set once it arrives! For those of you that have missed out never fear, we will make every effort to release these individually in the coming months though they will contain reduced booklets as much of this content is exclusive to the limited edition set. Borowczyk’s The Beast will be available on the same date as the Camera Obscura box and is available to pre-order here.

Many, many thanks to everyone who's showed such faith in this project - the finishing line is now definitely in sight!

[tenia]

Wow. Glad I already placed my pre order at Amazon some weeks ago now. It's nice to see such a difficult project getting so much faith in it from all side. I can only hope it means more projects of this kind will be able to see the light in a near future. It's very hopeful.

[RyanGallagher]

Amazon UK now has this listed as "unavailable", but Zavvi is still taking pre-orders. Does this mean Zavvi still has some of their allotment, or have they just not updated the page to reflect today's news? (or is that impossible to know?)

[TonyleStephanois]

Amazon UK now has this listed as "unavailable", but Zavvi is still taking pre-orders. Does this mean Zavvi still has some of their allotment, or have they just not updated the page to reflect today's news? (or is that impossible to know?)

Hard to know at this stage. We will try and update as much as possible regarding availability.

[criterion10]

Glad I placed my order a month ago from Amazon. I wonder how this would have sold if Arrow made it limited to an extra thousand copies -- its popularity seems to be much greater than expected.

[MichaelB]

We only had the right to print 1,000 copies of the short-story collection Anatomy of the Devil.

But I suspect the print run of the standalone The Beast will be a fair bit higher, and it's very very likely indeed (especially after yesterday's announcement) that the other individual discs will be coming out separately too.