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Walerian Borowczyk: Pocket Movie Guide: Walerian Borowczyk

Jeremy Mark Robinson

$27.95   $24.93

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English
Crescent Moon Publishing
29 November 2024
GOTO: ISLAND OF LOVE

WALERIAN BOROWCZYK

POCKET MOVIE GUIDE

BY JEREMY MARK ROBINSON

Walerian Borowczyk (1923-2006) is one of cinema's great talents. Quite simply, there is no filmmaker quite like 'Boro'. Borowczyk's films have an astonishing, magical quality. They reach a place very rare in contemporary cinema, and are quite unlike the films of any other auteur. Borowczyk's films create their own space, with imagery, sounds and music of a really exceptional power.

The great Walerian Borowczyk masterpiece is Goto: Island of Love. It made a big impression on audiences and critics, winning a number of prizes. Goto can rank alongside the great films in the history of cinema. Immoral Tales could be placed in the masterpiece class too. The other Borowczyk films are often as fascinating, often more grotesque - certainly more sexually explicit - but probably not as wholly satisfying as Goto: Island of Love, from a conventional critical standpoint. But The Beast, Blanche, Behind Convent Walls, and Love Rites would count as extraordinary films by most standards. They may not be quite up there with Persona (Ingmar Bergman) or 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini), but taken together they form a group of works that mark Borowczyk out as a maverick original. Similarly, Borowczyk isn't a filmmaker celebrated by critics or filmmakers, like Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Orson Welles, Jean Renoir or Sergei Eisenstein, and his films don't make critics' top ten lists. For detractors, Borowczyk's films were better when they concerned ideas rather than the senses - philosophy not sex.

You probably won't know many other people who've even heard of Walerian Borowczyk, let alone seen one of his films. His reputation as a producer of European arty porny films (art-as-porn films or porn-as-art films) is probably all that many people will have heard of him (movies with sex and nudity do seem to travel well, crossing borders). Needless to say, Borowczyk's films are not shown regularly on television, even by channels which boast of their open-mindedness and international film broadcasts. Similarly, you won't see Borowczyk's films at the cinema nowadays, even rep, arthouse and independent cinemas rarely screen his films. It's mainly home video releases (and, later, home DVD releases) that's enabled Borowczyk's films to reach a contemporary audience (the porny and arty elements make them perfect for niche marketing to the cognoscenti). And you'll have to hunt to find them all. You won't find The Beast next to Back To the Future and Bad Boys on the 'B' shelf in your local video store.

Contains illustrations from Goto, Borowczyk at work, and his favourite artists.

Bibliography, filmographies and notes. Illustrated. 232pp.

www.crmoon.com
By:  
Imprint:   Crescent Moon Publishing
Dimensions:   Height: 203mm,  Width: 127mm,  Spine: 12mm
Weight:   231g
ISBN:   9781861710642
ISBN 10:   186171064X
Pages:   232
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

JEREMY ROBINSON has published poetry, fiction, and studies of J.R.R. Tolkien, Samuel Beckett, Thomas Hardy, André Gide and D.H. Lawrence. Robinson has edited poetry books by Novalis, Ursula Le Guin, Friedrich Hölderlin, Francesco Petrarch, Dante Alighieri, Arseny Tarkovsky, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Books on film and animation include: The Akira Book - The Art of Katsuhiro Otomo - The Art of Masamune Shirow - The Ghost In the Shell Book - Fullmetal Alchemist - Cowboy Bebop: The Anime and Movie - The Cinema of Hayao Miyazaki - Hayao Miyazaki: Pocket Guide - Princess Mononoke: Pocket Movie Guide - Spirited Away: Pocket Movie Guide - Blade Runner and the Cinema of Philip K. Dick - Blade Runner: Pocket Movie Guide - The Cinema of Donald Cammell - Performance: Donald Cammell: Nic Roeg: Pocket Movie Guide - Pasolini: Il Cinema di Poesia/ The Cinema of Poetry - Salo: Pocket Movie Guide - The Trilogy of Life Movies: Pocket Movie Guide - The Gospel According To Matthew: Pocket Movie Guide - The Ecstatic Cinema of Tony Ching Siu-tung - Tsui Hark: The Dragon Master of Chinese Cinema - The Swordsman: Pocket Movie Guide - A Chinese Ghost Story: Pocket Movie Guide - Ken Russell: England's Great Visionary Film Director and Music Lover - Tommy: Ken Russell: The Who: Pocket Movie Guide - Women In Love: Ken Russell: D.H. Lawrence: Pocket Movie Guide - The Devils: Ken Russell: Pocket Movie Guide - Walerian Borowczyk: Cinema of Erotic Dreams - The Beast: Pocket Movie Guide - The Lord of the Rings Movies - The Fellowship of the Ring: Pocket Movie Guide - The Two Towers: Pocket Movie Guide - The Return of the King: Pocket Movie Guide - Jean-Luc Godard: The Passion of Cinema - The Sacred Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky - Andrei Tarkovsky: Pocket Guide.

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