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There has been a recent revival of interest in the work of Polish film director Walerian Borowczyk, a label-defying auteur and “escape artist” if there ever was one. This collection serves as an introduction and a guide to Borowczyk’s complex and ambiguous body of work, including panoramic views of the director’s output, focused studies of particular movies, and more personal, impressionistic pieces. Taken together, these contributions comprise a wide-ranging survey that is markedly experimental in character, allowing scholars to gain insight into previously unnoticed aspects of Borowczyk’s oeuvre.
“The contributors to this collection use new archival sources to provide a comprehensive map of Boro’s career and to reestablish his place in the history of Polish and European avant-garde and art cinema. All the essays are well informed and clearly written; collectively, they provide valuable insights into Boro's often puzzling, sometimes scandalous motivations and productions.” • Choice
“Boro, L'Île d'Amour will prove an essential companion for both those readers who wish to dive deeper into specific topics, and those looking to cherry-pick individual films …one of the qualities that Borowczyk valued most in film was its ability to capture perpetual motion. [This volume] does just that: it honors the artist in flux, finding fresh points of connection, without trying to pin him down.” • Cineaste
“…a thought-provoking collection of different essays commenting on the life and films of a renowned Polish film director, Walerian Borowczyk… One of the strengths of this book is that the authors of the essays link Borowczyk’s artistic output with the social and artistic environment of Poland in which he grew up, and of France, where he spent most of his adult life.” • Slavic Review
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: A Private Universe
Kamila Kuc, Kuba Mikurda, Michał Oleszczyk
Chapter 1. Boro: Escape Artist
Kuba Mikurda
Chapter 2. Borowczyk’s Kunstkamera
Marcin Giżycki
Chapter 3. Animated Bodies: A Conversation Between Kuba Mikurda and Jakub Woynarowski
Chapter 4. Cruel Imagination: Borowczyk’s Post-Traumatic Surrealism
Iwona Kurz
Chapter 5. The Postcard Never Sent: Guy de Maupassant and Rosalie Prudent’s Cinematic Confession
Kamila Kuc
Chapter 6. Boro: The Guide for the Perplexed
Fernando F. Croce
Chapter 7. Borowczyk’s Serial Labyrinth: From Goto, Isle of Love (1968) to Behind Convent Walls (1977)
James Snazell
Chapter 8. Immoral Toys: On Borowczyk’s A Private Collection (1974)
Edwin Carels
Chapter 9. The Beast with Two Backs: On Borowczyk’s The Beast (1975)
Philip Warnell
Chapter 10. Laughter in the Doll House: On Victorian Surrealism in Walerian Borowczyk’s Films
Kamila Wielebska
Chapter 11. Enjoying Excess: A Bataillean Interpretation of Story of Sin (1975) by Walerian Borowczyk and Stefan Żeromski
Marta Rabikowska
Chapter 12. The Beach, the Bubble and the Boudoir: The Meeting-Spaces of Walerian Borowczyk and André Pieyre de Mandiargues
Jonathan Owen
Chapter 13. Sex & the Sacred: The Obstacles to Desire Becoming its Objects
Jakub Majmurek
Chapter 14. Reflecting on The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Miss Osbourne (1981)
Budd Wilkins
Chapter 15. The Perils of Emmanuelle: A Conversation between Simon Abrams, Odie Henderson, and Michał Oleszczyk
Chapter 16. Revisiting Love Rites (1988)
Kevin Lee
Contributors Biographies
Filmography