Animation in Poland

AD 502 - Seminar in Contemporary Theory | Fall 2006 | Daria Tsoupikova | School of Art and Design | UIC

Animation in Poland

Witold GierszMiroslaw KijowiczJan LenicaWalerian Borowczyk


Polish filmmakers have drawn on their nation's rich tradition ofgraphic art, avant-garde theater, and puppetry to create someof the most technically sophisticated, darkly satiric, and fantasticalanimation in the world.

1950s and early 1960s, a time when Polish artists wouldcloak their indictments of Stalinism, power politics, and repressionin allegorical storytelling and ironical wit.

Even today, venerable Polish animation studios and independentanimation filmmakers continue to produce works noted for theiratmospheric tension, subtle graphic shadings, and meticulous,at times even grotesque, attention to detail.


• 1927 born in Poraj, Poland

graduated from the Lodz Film School

• 1950 started to work like animator in Slask Cooperative

Witold Giersz b.1827


the organisator of Studio Miniatur Filmowych in Warsaw

• 1960 Maly Western made by oil paintings, was a stimulus to the development of autor 's animation in Poland.

• 1963 Red and Black continued oil technique

• 1967 Horse



1975 Fire in which the textures of brushstrokes become an integral part of nature's processes

worked as an artist, director and producer of animated films. He has awarded almost 50 prizes and distinctions. He has produced over 35 films, many of them received prizes and distinctions.



• 1929 born in Saint Petersburg, Russia

Studied art at Warsaw

Miroslaw Kijowicz (1929- 1999)


1960s began work as cartoon film director

“short aphoristic films addressed to mental activity”

• 1960s Harlequin

The town

Portraits

Cabaret



1963 Fenix

• 1964 Vodja

• 1965 The banner

• 1971 Cages and science fiction

• 1978 The Water Babies

• 1999 died in Wyszków, Poland.



1928 born in Poznan, Poland

1945 started to contribute drawings

1947 graduated from a secondary school of music in Poznań Collegeof Music

1950 art editor of the satirical journal "Szpilki“

1952 graduated from Warsaw Polytechnic Deaprtment of Architecture

1954 Assistant at the Chair of Posterof the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts

1955 award for lithography for an immediatedistinctive style in poster Art

Jan Lenica (1928-2001)


1957 ONCE UPON A TIME with Walerian Borowczyk - grand prize atVenice and Mannhei

1957 Education Days, and Banner of Youthhand-painted graphic interludes in the manner of Len Lye

1957 Striptease

1958 Requited Sentiments Borowczyk and Lenica dispensed withoriginal artwork altogether, relying solely upon montage and cameramovement to transform the work of a Sunday-painter into a rathergrotesque love story.

1958 Dom (house)

1963 – 1986 lived and worked in Paris



1974 moved to the USA and lectured on poster art at HarvardUniversity in Cambrige

1979- 1985 the head of the Chair of Animated Film at KasselUniversity

1979 the head of animated films department at the University of Kasse

1987 lived and worked in Berlin

1986- 1994 he was Professor of Posters and Graphic Arts at the BerlinHochschule der Kunste.

"I have always liked to move at the periphery of Art, at the crossing ofgenres. ... I have enjoyed ... combining elements which wereseemingly distant, if not quite foreign, blurring the borders betweenadjacent areas, transplanting noble qualities to "lower" genres, in otherwords - quiet diversion”



Shortly after Dom, Lenica's collaboration with Borowczyk ended bitterly

and their frictions were never resolved. They retained and developed their preoccupations with the grotesqueand the absurd that was so evident in their Polish films.

1959 Monsieur Tete narrated by the absurdist playwright EugèneIonesco

1960 moved back to Poland and made New Janko the Musician basedon Henryk Sienkiewicz animated pastiche

1962 Labyrinth - Kafka-esque tale of a winged lonely man literallydevoured by totalitarian rule.

1963 moved to Germany and made The Rhinoceros



1964 A

1966-1968 Adam 2

1976 Lenica returned to animation and made King Ubu based onAlfred Jarry's story

1979 Ubu et la Grande Gidouille -the only one of Lenica's films thatwas to rely upon dialogue.

1980s a major retrospective of poster and animation work at theGeorges Pompidou Centre in Paris

1990s worked in UK with Tadeusz Konwicki on A Minor Apocalypse –his final film



1923 born in Kwilcz, Polandstudied fine arts before becoming a lithographer, for which he won thePolish prize and then an animator, often sharing directorial credit withcompatriot Jan Lenica.

subtly erotic, witty, and subversive animated shorts, their style utterly

unlike anything seen up through that time.

Late '50s moved to France and all of his major works were produced

there

1968 Goto, Island of Love

1972 Blanche

Walerian Borowczyk (1923-2006)


1974 Immoral Tales

1975 The Story of Sin the only work made in Poland

1975 La Bête

Borowczyk's cinema is one that resists pigeonholing due to his use of

many different cinematic styles

juxtaposition is an integral part of his art

music, photography and editing combine, in his best work, to produce

a cinematic poetry much more earthy, human and relevant than

anything in Tarkovsky's or Godard's filmography.



His films generally concern the cruel power of obsessional love and

the need for sensual pleasure. They depict how a repressive

atmosphere can exploit those in it (Blanche) or lead to the

abandonment of control (La Bête). They celebrate joy and show

outright disgust at misery but are still endowed with an ironic sense of

humour.


Animation in Poland

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