Walerian Borowczyk

Quote:
The Astronauts (1959) is a short, collaborative animation project between eccentric filmmakers Walerian Borowczyk and Chris Marker. Borowczyk would later move into live-action film-making, turning his attention to a cinema of perverse eroticism with projects like Goto, The Island of Love (1969), The Immoral Tales (1974), Beast (1975) and Emmanuelle 5 (1987). Likewise, Marker would produce the short masterpiece La Jetée (1962), the celebrated proto-documentary Sans Soleil (1983) and his critical study of Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, A.K. (1985). The film, at twelve-minutes in length, is a testament to the creative energy and ideas of these two filmmakers, not only standing as an interesting short film in its own right, but as a window into the creative world of these two, highly skilled, highly original filmmakers. It remains an amazing piece of work for this very reason, more so perhaps than any other; even if it is admittedly impossible to distinguish between which filmmaker was responsible for each individual part of the creative process, leaving us to assume that it was a pure collaboration in every sense of the word.Read More »

Synopsis:
Walerian Borowczyk’s second feature was just as original as his first. Almost entirely live action this time, it is situated on the archipelago of Goto, which has been cut off from the rest of human civilisation by a massive earthquake and has consequently developed its own arcane rules. Melancholic dictator Goto III (Pierre Brasseur) is married to the beautiful Glossia (Ligia Branice), who in turn is lusted after by the petty thief Gozo (Guy Saint-Jean) as he works his way up the hierarchy. Read More »

The Margin (French: La Marge, also known as The Streetwalker and Emmanuelle 77) is a 1976 French erotic drama film written and directed by Walerian Borowczyk and starring Sylvia Kristel. It is loosely based on the novel The Margin by André Pieyre de Mandiargues.Read More »

Plot / Synopsis
In his 2006 obituary, The New York Times called Walerian Borowczyk “the internationally known filmmaker described variously as a genius, a pornographer, and a genius who also happened to be a pornographer.” And for the final film in his ‘Immoral Trilogy’, Borowczyk created one of the most lushly bizarre erotic tales of our time and perhaps the most ambitious work of his entire career. The setting is Rome, 8 A.D., where the poet Ovid watches over an epoch of forbidden seduction and unnatural acts among maidens, centurions, servant girls and the occasional farm animal. Marina Pierro , Laura Betti, Milena Vukotic and Massimo Girotti star in this sumptuous art/smut classic, now fully restored and presented uncensored.Read More »