A tale of medieval quest for a golden harp called “The Knight”.

Quote:
THE KNIGHT (RYCERZ), 1980. Poland.
With Piotr Skarga, Daniel Olbrychski. A haunting, austere ballad about a knight’s quest for a gold-stringed harp whose sound is said to bring peace and harmony. The film’s imagery is inspired by medieval icons. 81 min.

New York Film Festival
London Film Festival
Los Angeles Film Festival

“A haunting, austere parable that has been directed with assurance by Lech Majewski who has a flair for starkly poetic compositions. His film retains its spare, arresting visual style throughout.” — Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“Lech Majewski’s beautiful, mystical film, The Knight, has rich nightmarish images inspired by 13th century icons.”
— Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times

Lech Majewski, a Polish artist who works internationally, is known for the films and videos he writes, directs, and shoots, and for his original scores. A graduate of the Lodz Film School, Majewski is also a poet, painter, and stage director celebrated for opera and theatrical events. His stylized moving-image works eschew language in favor of music and fantastically expressive landscapes, both domestic and topographical. His imaginative features are distinguished by a unique sensibility hovering not only between the absurd and the metaphysical, but also the beautiful and the profane. All films are written and directed by Majewski. In Polish with English subtitles unless otherwise noted.

(Text is from the MOMA catalog. The MOMA program was organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film and Media, Museum of Modern Art, NYC)

The.Knight.1980.DVDRIP.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

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Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 24 min
Size: 	1.31 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
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https://nitro.download/view/33AA3B48A7886FF/The.Knight.1980.DVDRIP.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

Language(s):Polish
Subtitles:English

The post Lech Majewski – Rycerz AKA The Knight (1980) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
“Valley of the Gods,” which stars Josh Hartnett, John Malkovich, Keir Dullea, Bérénice Marlohe and John Rhys-Davies, presents the clash between the ancient civilization of the Navajo and the ultra-modern, high-tech world of multi-billionaires.

The Navajo “live in really very harsh conditions and their territory is surrounded by this super civilization, the Roman Empire of today, with this epitome of technical innovation,” Majewski told Variety. “I don’t know whether there is another place in the world that has this kind of absolute opposite sides.”

Majewski contrasted his film and its fantastical themes with Hollywood’s ever growing crop of comic book movies.

“I’m always interested in ancient societies and mythologies. I’m interested in archetypes. I’m interested in what is the underlying foundation of us humans and the juxtaposition of this with what is offered today and how bastardized versions of the myths are sold via the box office, those endless reproductions of comic characters. No one wants to try anything new, everything has to be tried and proven.”

On his choice of Hartnett for the role of a struggling writer who visits both worlds, Majewski said: “I wanted him because he transpires a certain intensity. He has this quality of an old-school star and at the same time he has a little bit of Indian features himself, there is a little drop of blood in him that is coming from this side and since my story was really Navajo mythology based, I wanted the writer who writes about it to be a little bit connected on some level.”

Majewski had to get permission to shoot parts of “Valley of the Gods” in Monument Valley, Utah, on Navajo Nation land. Navajo actors also appear in the movie.

“I had to be accepted, also with my screenplay and with my attitude towards them. Funnily enough one of them said to me, ‘You are a white guy but this film as I see it is told from our point of view and this is the first time I see a movie told from our standpoint, from how we understand the world.’ This made me extremely happy. … It was really the greatest thing I could hear.”

For Hartnett, working with Majewski was a novelty.

“The process of making this film was unlike anything I’ve ever done before, obviously,” the actor said at a press conference at Camerimage. “Lech is not necessarily interested in over explaining the film to anyone, and I think that includes the actors.”

He added, “My hope in being part of this was to be a part of something that was intense and personal and hopefully something that stands the test of time and continues to speak to people.”

Hartnett praised the director’s singular vision. “I don’t think I’ve ever worked with anyone that I felt had such control over what it is they’re doing. Often there are compromises being made in film because of the expense, because of the eclectic nature, that a director will be unhappy with, and with Lech, I didn’t experience that. He did what he wanted to do and I admire that greatly. It’s very rare to get the opportunity to work with someone who has that sort of control.”

The film also marks a return to this big screen for Dullea, who played astronaut Dave Bowman in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Majewski admitted that there are some allusions to the Stanley Kubrick classic in his film.

“I always wanted to work with Keir and finally I managed to work with him on this project. He kept saying that this was exactly 50 years after he did ‘2001.’” Dullea pointed out to Majewski that he had aged 50 years on Jupiter, so the director had seemingly plucked him straight from the gas giant. “So the coincidences were happening of course.”

Lech Majewski - (2019) Valley of the Gods.mkv

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Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 6 min
Size: 	2.61 GiB
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https://nitro.download/view/7874DC2C0E31B48/Lech_Majewski_-_(2019)_Valley_of_the_Gods.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Lech Majewski – Valley of the Gods (2019) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

This movie focuses on a dozen of the five hundred characters depicted in Bruegel’s painting. The theme of Christ’s suffering is set against religious persecution in Flanders in 1564.

The.Mill.and.the.Cross.2011.576p.BluRay.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 35 min
Size: 	2.48 GiB
Video
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https://nitro.download/view/B791602760A553E/The.Mill.and.the.Cross.2011.576p.BluRay.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language(s):English, Spanish, Flemish
Subtitles:English, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Turkish, Bulgarian, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Greek, Hungarian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian

The post Lech Majewski – Mlyn i krzyz AKA The Mill and the Cross (2011) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
THE KNIGHT (RYCERZ), 1980. Poland.
With Piotr Skarga, Daniel Olbrychski. A haunting, austere ballad about a knight’s quest for a gold-stringed harp whose sound is said to bring peace and harmony. The film’s imagery is inspired by medieval icons. 81 min.

New York Film Festival
London Film Festival
Los Angeles Film Festival

“A haunting, austere parable that has been directed with assurance by Lech Majewski who has a flair for starkly poetic compositions. His film retains its spare, arresting visual style throughout.” — Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“Lech Majewski’s beautiful, mystical film, The Knight, has rich nightmarish images inspired by 13th century icons.”
— Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times

Lech Majewski, a Polish artist who works internationally, is known for the films and videos he writes, directs, and shoots, and for his original scores. A graduate of the Lodz Film School, Majewski is also a poet, painter, and stage director celebrated for opera and theatrical events. His stylized moving-image works eschew language in favor of music and fantastically expressive landscapes, both domestic and topographical. His imaginative features are distinguished by a unique sensibility hovering not only between the absurd and the metaphysical, but also the beautiful and the profane. All films are written and directed by Majewski. In Polish with English subtitles unless otherwise noted.
(Text is from the MOMA catalog. The MOMA program was organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film and Media, Museum of Modern Art, NYC)

700MB | 1h 20m | 640×480 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/F8B496139B9B0FE/Rycerz__satrip_by_pempek_.avi
https://nitro.download/view/B38A0F47E8F3FC6/Rycerz_satrip_by_pempek_corrected.srt

Language(s):Polish
Subtitles:English

The post Lech Majewski – Rycerz AKA The Knight (1980) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Working from his own novel Metaphysics, writer-director Lech Majewski (Glass Lips, Gospel According to Harry) crafts magic in The Garden of Earthly Delights intimate passion plays, which are filled with loving detail (Village Voice) and creates a luminous, highly erotic treatise on art, love and death (Chicago Reader). When London art historian Claudine (Claudine Spiteri) meets engineer Chris (Chris Nightingale), it is love and lust at first sight. But their spiritual and erotic connection is threatened by a devastating and deadly illness. Her remaining days on earth numbered, Claudine chooses to fan the flames of her obsession with Hieronymus Bosch by taking her lover on a trip to Venice, where the artist s work becomes the background for their physical passion and emotional discovery. Like Dante s Beatrice, Claudine becomes Chris guide into a labyrinth of sensuality, love, death, regret and redemption

1.40GB | 1h 44m | 888×480 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/D42A401EC06EFDA/The.Garden.of.Earthly.Delights.DVDRip.x264.0BV.mkv
https://nitroflare.com/view/E79DFE1573DF360/Interview_-_Lech_Majewski.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:Italian, Russian

The post Lech Majewski – The Garden of Earthly Delights (2004) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
This dialog-free film, originally presented as 33 short films, is an experimental, bizarre set of meditations and flashbacks of the grotesque.

1.58GB | 1 h 34 min | 832×468 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/914A9187E829163/Glass.Lips.2007.DVDRip.DD5.1.x264.mkv

Language:None
Subtitles:No dialogue

The post Lech Majewski – Blood of a Poet AKA Glass Lips (2007) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

From The Lumiere Reader:
THIS frankly marvelous film by Polish/American director Lech Majewski concerns a real-life cult of Polish working-class painters who were given three Fátima-like prophecies upon the death of their spiritual leader in the thirties – upcoming were a great war, a red plague and a death ray from Saturn that would destroy the earth. Their behaviour in response results in all sorts of shenanigans. Angelus hasn’t achieved much international coverage since its release in 2000, but it’s unclear why this hilarious, loving tribute to human folly and ambition was so ignored. A revelation that only a Film Society can dredge up, Angelus reveals Majewski’s painterly visual touch, and his wry sense of humour.

Of course, some of the references are uniquely Polish, but the tale of Silesian miners who also like to paint, and end up trying to save the world despite Communist authorities manages to transcend its localised origins. Majewski refuses to patronise his collection of oddballs, and by having a shy, visually awkward orphan as a lead, he makes sure that the proceedings don’t end up being too farcical. But it’s the rich characterisation that makes the film so winning, and Majewski probably captured some of his strongest performances – the painters are given their individual quirks, whether it’s the painter who likes to keep cold (which includes sleeping with the window open in the harsh Polish winter or keeping his books in the fridge) or the man who confesses he’s not a virgin (important for redemption purposes) because he’s slept with a goat. The long-suffering females are winning (frequently nymphomaniacal) and the wicked dandyish portrayals of Hitler and Stalin stand-out in the film’s frequent narrative digressions.

The film is composed of a series of tableaux (mostly with a flat 2-D style), which brings to mind Paradjanov’s Colour of Pomegranates. However, it may reflect the painters’ visual palette (I must confess to having no idea of the painters’ style), the drained colours and idiosyncratic mise-en-scène complementing the unique behaviour on film. Given art as a central concern throughout Majewski’s oeuvre, it was inevitable that his films would appear painterly (though this had the strongest visual style out of the Film Society-screened Majewski films). The final shot is straight out of Pasolini’s Theorem, and while in that film, it was always ambiguous whether The Visitor was a Messiah or Satan, it is clear in Angelus that the narrator is a messianic figure. To Majewski’s credit, he refuses to judge the craziness of the cult’s behaviour through leaving the narrator’s outcome untold. A thoroughly enjoyable and resonant film, Angelus deserves to reach a far wider audience than it has achieved.

https://nitro.download/view/F4FE84F1CB39776/Angelus.mkv

Language(s):Polish
Subtitles:English

The post Lech Majewski – Angelus (2000) first appeared on Cinema of the World.