Friday, July 29, 2016 – Thursday, August 4, 2016 2pm, 7:30pm
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 W 65th St, New York, New York 10023
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Zulawski’s masterpiece, the almost indescribable (…) comparable for sheer weirdness to David Lynch’s “Dune” – James Hoberman, The New York Times
On the Silver Globe remains one of the most unforgettable visual assaults in movie history – Michael Atkinson, Exile Cinema
The Film Society of Lincoln Center, in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute in New York is proud to present a new digital restoration of the late Andrzej Zulawski’s sci-fi cult epic On the Silver Globe, the most ambitious and difficult project of his career, which critics have compared to David Lynch’s Dune and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain.
The largest Polish production of all time when shooting began in 1976, production was halted by the Ministry of Culture for two years due to accusations of subversiveness. The film was finally reconstituted and completed after the fall of Communism over a decade later. The resulting film follows a group of astronauts who, after crash-landing on the moon, forge a new society. As the first generation dies off, their children devise new rituals and mythologies to structure the emergent civilization, until a politician from Earth arrives and is hailed as the Messiah… An inexhaustibly inventive and absorbing film maudit that quite literally creates a new cinematic world, On the Silver Globe is perhaps the grandest expression of Zulawski’s visionary artistry. Now this very rarely screened film returns in a new digital restoration personally approved by Zulawski and director of photographyAndrzej Jaroszewicz.
Andrzej Zulawski (1940 – 2016) director, screenwriter, novelist, essayist and actor has created a body of work unlike any other. His debut feature The Third Part of the Night (1971) defined his exuberant style, which developed over the course of his career in Poland and France.
Zulawski’s filmmaking is like an expressive dance, with non-linear storytelling and elements of surrealism, where extravagance of form serves as a metaphor for conflicting forces within the human soul and a desperate search for the truth, beauty, the absolute, and salvation. Loved by many, hated by some, he remains one of Poland’s and Europe’s most radical and appreciated filmmakers.
He began his career as an assistant director to Andrzej Wajda (Samson, 1961; The Ashes, 1965). After The Third Part of the Night, Zulawski made The Devil (1972) which was banned by the Communist authorities. Following the success in France of That Most Important Thing: Love, he was allowed to return to Poland to make a science fiction epic, On the Silver Globe (1976/1988), an allegory of totalitarianism that was yet again banned by the authorities. Zulawski was forced to leave Poland for France to continue working. Possession and La Femme Publique (1984) with Valerie Kaprisky, are two of the “wild, imaginative, and controversial pictures” (Yuri German, All Movie Guide) that gained Zulawski his reputation as a non-conformist visionary. Andrzej Zulawski’s last film, Cosmos (2015), is a literary adaptation suffused with his trademark freneticism, transforming Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz’s novel of the same name into an ominous and manic exploration of desire.
Reviews:
The New York Times: On the Silver Globe, Andrzej Zulawskis Thwarted Sci-Fi Masterwork by A.O. Scott
The New Yorker: On The Silver Globe by Richard Brody
The Village Voice: Andrzej Zulawski: On the Silver Globe by Tanner Tafelski
RogerEbert.com: On the Silver Globe by Scout Tafoya
Screen Slate: On the Silver Globe by Patrick Dahl
Brooklyn Magazine: The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, July 27-August 2
NY Review of Books: On the Silver Globe
The Film Stage: NYC Weekend Watch by Nick Newman
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