Bodo Kox, photo: OffPlusCamera
By now, you would have heard of the Girl From the Closet, labelled "Poland's best debut of recent years", but what did Kox do before that? Before becoming a big-shot feature-film director who is hoping to get an Oscar and then spend the rest of his days on a yacht in the Mediterranean, he made indie films. Find out for yourself why they called him the icon of the Polish off-scene. They may be in Polish but, in Kox's words, in a good movie all you need is "heavy drinking, drug abuse and dancing, people making out, naked hotties and, of course, fighting".
1. Don’t Panic! by Bodo Kox, 2007
The three guys from the trailer are Zygi, Antek and Radzio. They're broke and unemployed but they prefer drinking than starting to get their act together. In one of their drunken feats they steal the McDonald's mascot and catch the attention of a slow-witted policeman. The film not only has Marcin Dorociński and songs by Pustki in it, but as Kox says in the trailer "There’s heavy drinking, drugs and dancing. There are people making out. Naked hotties. And, of course, fighting. There’s a cowboy, a crazy woman, guns and cops. There is a lot happening, just like it should be in a good movie." With Don't Panic, Kox closed the indie production chapter of his life.
2. Girl From the Closet by Bodo Kox, 2012
Tomek has a brain tumour and the savant syndrome, Magda is suffering from depression. They hide from the world and only find comfort by imagining different worlds - but once they discover that someone else knows how they feel, their lives change. Toned down in comparison to his indie productions, Kox's professional debut is moving and ironic, melodramatic and humorous. See Culture.pl's review of Girl From the Closet.
3. The Boy from Wadowice. The Life and Creative Output of Oscar Boszko by Bodo Kox, 2007
The star of the film is Oscar Boszko, Kox's alter ego and "a genius". A distrubed director who is constantly high, he appeared in a number of Kox's movies. In this video "the man in the foreground is Oscar Boszko, an outstanding movie and theatre director commonly considered Poland's most important creator of the first decade of the 21st century", a woman's voice says in the trailer. "The theatre-foyer sofa is his natural habitat. This is one of the spaces where, inspired by the cosmos, he invents his greatest masterpieces. Now frozen in his classic contemplative pose, he seems not to be reacting to the surroundings and any sort of stimulus". Although Boszko's heart stopped beating, and he will "probably not follow in the footsteps of that citizen of Nazareth and resurrect", Kox says that "his personality lives on in my work".
4. Chat Fiends - underground internet series
The series came to life as a result of procrastination. Instead of working on his next script, Kox was playing around with his webcam. Together with Wojciech Mecwaldowski they created Czatersi / Chat Fiends [editor's translation] and got thousands of Youtube fans. In this episode Kox pretends to by skyping with the last Communist leader of Poland, General Wojciech Jaruzelski. The General's speech is taken from his television appearance at 6 am on the 13th of December 1981 when he declared martial law in Poland. Here is what their "conversation" sounds like:
Kox: "Hi Wojteczek, what's happening in the country?"
Jaruzelski: "Our homeland..."
Kox: "Right on".
Jaruzelski: "...is at the edge of an abyss".
Kox: "Oh God".
Jaruzelski: "The achievements of many generations and the Polish home that has been built up from the dust are about to turn into ruins".
Kox: "Fuck me..."
Jaruzelski: "State structures are ceasing to function. Each day delivers new blows to the waning economy".
Kox: [sigh]
5. Marco P. and the Bike Thieves by Bodo Kox, 2005
Kox's best independent movie is a criminal comedy made in the spirit of Park Chan-wook's thriller Oldboy and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. It tells the story of Marco, a biking fanatic who turns into a beast thirsty for revenge, implementing justice with a bicycle pump. While pulling out his victim's fingernails, Marco sings "Your lips are so red / red like the burning dawn of the enchanted mornings", lyrics from the famous Groszki i Róże / Polkadots and Roses by Ewa Demarczyk, one of Poland's most talented, charismatic singers in the 1960s.
6. Pipe by Bodo Kox, 2011
A commentary on today's reality, the film alludes to Andrzej Wajda’s Kanał / Canal, the 1957 film set during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, part of the loose trilogy that placed Wajda among the important directors of the new European generation.
7. Moon River by Bodo Kox, 2011
Kox's version of the landing on the moon. Neil Armstrong is a Czech astronaut and the transmission from the expedition is being watched by a maid. "That's one small step step for man, one giant leap for mankind. Have I already said that?"
8. IncarNations - Out of Tears - video clip by Bodo Kox
Before he was a director, he wanted to become a musician and sang in the band E Vviva L' Arte, writing songs for them for five years. Despite his rock-star name he never became a rock star, yet music remains an impertinent, er, important part of his creative work. He made video clips:
...and he sang. Here is Kox's playback version of Uciekaj moje serce / Run Away My Heart from one of Poland's most popular rock bands from the late 1960s - Czerwone Guitary / The Red Guitars.
9. Blood From the Nose by Dominik Matwiejczyk, 2004
"I am more of an amateur than an actor", Kox claims, but he played in a couple of movies. In Blood.. he plays a hip-hop screw-up, a role for which he received a 2005 OFFskar for Best Male Role in an independent film. "With the way I am built it’s easier to pretend to be imbecile or a psychopath than a lover or a genius academic", he once said in an interview, "And since I became a professional filmmaker, out of respect for the real actors and actresses, I rarely set foot in front of the camera".
10. Fallow Land by Dominik Matwiejczyk, 2005
Another acting role, considered Kox's best performance, in Fallow Land he plays a young boy who has to face up to his neo-Nazi brother. In 2005, at the 30th Gdynia Film Festival, Poland’s most recognised feature-film festival, he received a mention for his roles in Dominik Matwiejczyk’s Fallow Land and Piotr Matwiejczyk’s Homo Father.
All titles are translated from Polish by the editor.
Author: Bartosz Staszczyszyn, translated and edited by MJ 14.06.2013