The Wedding
Sat 28 FebIn adapting Stanisław Wyspiański’s seminal 1901 poem-play of Polish national discord, Wajda created the first truly psychedelic Polish extravaganza, rivaled at the time only by some passages from his protégé’s slightly earlier Third Part of the Night (1971). As a class-crossing wedding takes place in a peasant hut near Kraków (in what is still-partitioned Poland, with no statehood or independence to speak of), the spectacle of societal intermingling becomes more and more fervid, aided by Witold Sobociński’s vertiginous camerawork. In Wajda’s vision it’s not only The Intellectual (Daniel Olbrychski) marrying a Peasant Woman (Ewa Ziętek), it is Poland’s vital juices that are churning in front of an ever-moving camera, to the rhythm of Stanisław Radwan’s hypnotic score. This ultimately tragic death dance of Polish national phantoms is one of Wajda’s finest achievements.
This film is part of the strand: Two Visions, One Nation: Wajda and Żuławski (Read more below)
Introduction
Screening preceded by a prerecorded introduction from season curator Michal Oleszczyk
Two Visions, One Nation: Wajda and Żuławski
Andrzej Wajda was Andrzej Żuławski’s senior by 14 years, and in terms of international festival prizes (Palme d’Or, Academy Award), he seems to be the more recognized of the two. And yet, Wajda’s filmography was regularly visited, interfered with — as well as downright haunted — by the presence of his brilliant student, assistant and (ultimately) creative opponent.
Żuławski’s initial fascination with Wajda was clear in his choice of a M.A. thesis he wrote on Kanal in 1959 at IDHEC film school in Paris. Later on, he assisted Wajda on the Polish segment of Love at Twenty (1962) and on the epic Ashes (1966). From 1970 on, Żuławski turns from protégé to rival, as his progressively more frenetic films challenge Wajda’s more classical approach.
This series aims at presenting a series of double-bills that highlight the myriad ways in which Wajda’s and Żuławski’s bodies of work not only co-exist in a lively dialogue with one another, but also joyfully meet, orgiastically merge and violently clash. While both artists were different in their career trajectories and personal choices, what unites them is a fervid engagement with the vortex of Polish history, eager exploration of class and ideological conflicts of the 20th century, as well as — last but not least — the transnational dimension of their work, with Żuławski traversing the Iron Curtain as a director of alternatively Polish and French films, and Wajda engaging in multiple co-productions, in which he tried to address international audience on its own turf.
This series, while far from exploring the complete set of connections between two filmographies, is an invitation to further comparisons and explorations.
Michał Oleszczyk, Season Curator
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