Still from "The Devil", source: Studio Filmowe Kadr/Filmoteka Narodowa/www.fototeka.fn.org.pl
From A Whisper to a Scream: Discovering Andrzej Żuławski at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is a retrospective of the works of the art house director
Following the month-long tribute to Andrzej Żuławski at BAMcinematek in New York and the at Cinefamily in Los Angeles, San Francisco presents five films from the Director, screenwriter, novelist, essayist and actor. Called a non-conformist visionary of world cinema, the French educated, highly cultured director's film characters are known for their cathartic explosions of violence, sexuality, and despair. Żuławski has created characters who have played out the most intensely high-pitched emotions in cinema history. According to The Ferroni Brigade, the French coined the term "Zulawskienne," meaning "over the top."
Żuławski, in an interview with Margaret Barton-Fumo describes his films as provoking a certain kind of awareness, nervousness, open-eyed-ness, which cannot be equated to showing hysteria in its clinical understanding. Influenced by his experiences in wartime and communist Poland, his approach to storytelling is so idiosyncratic that he is unclassifiable. As Wall Street Journal's Kristin M. Jones puts it, "Like movies by David Lynch or Roman Polanski, Mr. Zulawski's work addresses love, madness and troubled relationships, but his approach to storytelling and his cosmology of personal, political and biblical allusions are all his own".
Żuławski's films are characteristic for the use of recurring themes, details and doppelgangers across multiple films as well as sudden intrusions of humor in the most horrific scenes. From a Whisper to a Scream features five films remastered as brand-new 35mm prints: The Shaman, Possession, The Third Part of the Night, The Devil and On The Silver Globe.
The Shaman is an encounter between an emotionally damaged anthropology professor and a deranged or supernatural "Italian", and an obsession with the body of a perfectly preserved 3,000-year-old shaman. Possession - his best-known film, is a sexually-charged psychological thriller with public screaming matches to sudden acts of violence and horror. Portraying the rift and pain of separation and divorce, the motion picture stars Isabelle Adjani, who won the Cannes Award in 1981 for the role. His surreal debut feature, The Third Part of the Night is a story about the cruelty of war. Based on the experiences of his father who ran experiments on Typhoid Fever infections, the film follows a fugitive who witnesses the murder of his family and enters a crazed world of traps, doubles, disease and death.
Żuławski was twice thrown out of communist by the totalitarian regime for a movie set in the past: The Devil and the other set in the future: On the Silver Screen. In the midst of the Prussian invasion of Poland in 1793, the nobleman Jakub, descends into madness when possessed by The Devil. It is a tale about the descent into madness and a political allegory to the communist reaction to the 1968 student uprising. The science fiction film On The Silver Globe - an adaptation of his great-uncle's novel is a space odyssey where astronauts find a strange civilisation on the moon.
Screenings at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts:
May 3, 2012 7:30pm - The Shaman
May 6, 2012 2:00pm - Possession
May 10, 2012 7:30pm - TheThird Part of the Night
May 12, 2012 7:30pm - The Devil
May 13, 2012 2:00pm - On the Silver Globe
Sources: Yerba Buena Center for the Art, Mubi.com, Film Society Lincoln Center, The Wall Street Journal
Editor: Marta Jazowska