Popular reviews

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  Review by DBC ★★★½

  The Weekly Animation Challenge 2020
  Week 5: European Animation (Poland)
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  Maybe there's some larger interpretation/explanation for Dom that perfectly explains what the hell is going on (UFO flybys, Polish kung fu fighting, a toupee that eats things?); to my eyes it looks like the filmmakers had a lot of different ideas for animated sequences using different mediums but maybe not much of a clue how to make it into a cohesive whole. Still, with its spacey soundtrack and dreamy-to-the-point-of-sleep-inducing aesthetic this experimental short feels about 10 years ahead of its time, and is the kind of old-school artsy sci-fi mess that's pretty much right up my alley.

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  Review by Graham Williamson ★★★

  This is the first of Walerian Borowczyk's films to star his wife, Ligia Branice, so it seems the perfect place to offer an appreciation of one of the most underrated actresses in all of film. As far as I'm aware, she only appeared in two non-Borowczyk films, though one of them was Chris Marker's immortal La Jetee. Perhaps he cast her because, after this and Les astronautes (which Marker took a co-directing credit on purely to help Borowczyk get around immigration laws applying to film production), she was the only actor he knew who had experience acting in still photographs.

  I haven't rewatched La Jetee since I was turned on to Borowczyk, but I saw some still photos of it…

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  Review by hecticvexed ★★½

  Surreal collection of stop-motion animations with a variety of media, including hand drawings, photograph collages, and what I guess could be found footage. Completely without dialogue or discernible plot, so what you get out of this really depends on what you're willing to invest in the symbolism and how much you enjoy strange animation.

  IMDb suggests these animated sequences are the hallucinations of a woman who bookends each sequence. To me, I think it's trying to highlight how so much meaning in everyday things we see are only ever meaningful when we bring our mindsets to them, and how those interpretations can be difficult to reconcile with ambiguous frameworks. There's a sequence where a fighter appears to be mindlessly kicking…

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  Review by Richmond_Hill ★★★

  Interesting more as a point in time - politically and artistically - than anything satisfying in itself, this is a quite dotty but fascinating piece deserving plaudits for the sheer variety of technique crammed into a few short minutes.

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  Review by Luís Gómez ★★★½ 2

  Borowczyk goes Švankmajer.

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  Review by deepbluefunk ★★★

  Strange dream of film with dolls, migrating hair, Muybridge cut outs beating drums and so on...
  It's evocative, elusive and also a bit sleep inducing.

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  Review by LaraAC ★★★½

  I took advantage of spending holidays at my parents' house which has a big flat tv screen (as opposed to my tiny laptop monitor) to watch some Borowczyk in a better medium than usual; this one was new to me and just as playful as full of joy as other early shorts. I'm only vaguely aware of Lenica's work but after this I'll definitely be seeking it out. Loved the wig scene, of course, and Ligia's face is as moving as always, but my favorite bit was the one with themannequin's head, because that felt pure Borowczyk - women acting their desires upon inanimate objects.

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  Review by Lencho of the Apes ★★★

  That retro collage/animation style wih its roots in Ernst and the dadaists, that leads in the direction of Terry Gilliam... Seems like everybody was doing that in the late fifties/early sixties. Even Walerian Borowczyk.

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  Review by Michael Bihari ★★★

  Aliens in Poland circa 1959? Strange short-best scene is the blonde wig that slithers across a table and eats. Worth watching for that alone!