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May 04, 2006
MoMA Retrospective Celebrates NYC Transplant Majewski
I do not know about you, but I am all about Polish Constitution Day. And it looks like MoMA is too, what with the Film and Media department's genius timing of this month's Lech Majewski retrospective. At 52, the Polish filmmaker is the youngest director ever honored with such a program, and its start on May 3 coincides with with the 215th anniversary of his native country's (short-lived) proclamation of democracy.
Or maybe that has nothing to do with it; Majewski is sort of a local boy now, having lived in New York off-and-on since 1981. In the interim, he conceived the story for Julian Schnabel's Basquiat, directed an unknown Viggo Mortensen in 1992's little-seen The Gospel According to Harry and globetrotted his way through a half-dozen other feature-length projects that blend painterly imagery with dense, ruminative dramatic frameworks. Wednesday's world premiere of Blood of a Poet imposed a simple enough narrative (father abuses son, son wallows in biblical iconography, father succumbs to foot fetish) over Majewski's near-balletic fusion of texture and movement.
And if it feels fragmented, do not worry--you are on the right track. "It has a peculiar dimension," said Majewski, who sidelines as a poet, novelist, painter and composer. "On one hand this is kind of a feature film, which you will see tonight. But on the other, this is an assembly of 33 video pieces--short features--that can be viewed separately, and as such can be presented in an art gallery, viewed on 33 separate screens at the same time. So whichever way you view it will take you through this maze--through this other experience. This will be the variation that you get. Also, the piece that you see tonight has a kind of linear allotment of the story. It can be switched around. So the segments you can move around and get a slightly different context."
While the relentless surrealism (bleeding pin-ups, 365-story towers) rankled at least a few impatient viewers, the reception was mostly warm, welcoming and looking forward to the next 10 days of screenings. The 14-year-old Gospel will at long last get a New York "run"; it valiantly went up against Mission: Impossible III Wednesday night with its own New York premiere.
Of course, there is plenty more where that came from, and MoMA has the rest of the program here.
Posted by stvanairsdale at May 4, 2006 01:32 PM
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