The Immoral Tales of Walerian Borowczyk at American Cinematheque
Saturday, October 24 — Saturday, November 21, 2026
Los Feliz Theatre
1822 N Vermont Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90027
Series | “Venus on the Half-Shell,” THE BEAST, “Joachim’s Dictionary,” THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MISS OSBOURNE, “A Private Collection,” IMMORAL TALES, “Gavotte,” LULU, “The Greatest Love of All Time,” THE MARGIN, “Rosalie,” BLANCHE and THE STORY OF SIN
Provocative, surreal and defiantly transgressive, Walerian Borowczyk’s cinema boldly explores the unspoken aspects of existence and sensuality. As disturbing as it is humorous, the visionary’s oeuvre dares to transform forbidden desires and moral musings into fantastical dreamscapes that satirize the complexities of the human condition. From his beautifully unsettling early animations and experimental short films to his subversive fever dreams of features, the American Cinematheque, in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute New York, is proud to present a collection of landmark 20th century European cinema by the “engineer of ecstasy.”
Venus on the Half-Shell / The Beast
Saturday, October 24 at 10:00 PM
Walerian Borowczyk / Venus on the Half-Shell / 1975 / 5min / DCP / Tamasa Distribution / France
Featuring Bona Tibertelli De Pisis’s excellent erotic graphic works – wife of writer André Pieyre de Mandiargues while working in her atelier, together with fragments of her graphic works inspired by one of Remy de Gourmont’s writings.
Restored in 4K in 2026 by Friends of Walerian Borowczyk at Fixafilm laboratory, from a 35mm internegative and the original 35mm negative. Funding provided by Polski Instytut Sztuki Filmowej.
Walerian Borowczyk / The Beast / 1975 / 108min / AGFA / DCP / France
Walerian Borowczyk’s most notorious film wildly re-works Beauty and the Beast into an adult fairy tale that parodies pornographic tropes and assaults all notions of “good taste.” Bestial dreams interrupt the plans of a French aristocrat to marry off Mathurin, his deformed son, to Lucy, a horny American heiress. Yet Mathurin seems more interested in his horses than in his bride-to-be. When Lucy discovers the story of an 18th-century ancestor copulating with the titular beast, it sparks to life one of the most outrageous dream sequences in cinema history. A huge hit in France that was extensively censored and banned all over the world, The Beast (aka La Bête) broke new ground in sexual explicitness and remains a truly startling experience today.
Joachim’s Dictionary / The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne
Friday, October 30 at 10:00 PM
Walerian Borowczyk / Joachim’s Dictionary / 1965 / 9min / DCP / France
Based on a sparse, singular design by Laurence Demaria (Ligia Borowczyk), Joachim defines twenty six words each beginning with a different letter from the alphabet. As with “Grandma’s Encyclopedia,” Borowczyk offers a succession of visual definitions which suggest a doomed attempt at mastering the absurdities of the world. Frequently hilarious, Joachim’s Dictionary is Borowczyk at his most anarchic.
Walerian Borowczyk / The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne / 1981 / 92min / DCP / AGFA / France
IIt’s the engagement party for brilliant young Dr. Henry Jekyll (Udo Kier, Suspiria) and his fiancée, the beautiful Fanny Osbourne (Marina Pierro). The party is attended by various pillars of Victorian society, including Patrick Magee (A Clockwork Orange) in one of his final roles. When people are found assaulted and murdered on the manor grounds, it becomes clear that a maniac is disrupting the festivities. But who is he? And why does Jekyll keep sneaking off to his laboratory? This visually stunning adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous story by surrealist icon Walerian Borowczyk (The Beast) is crammed with imaginative and perverse touches.
A Private Collection / Immoral Tales
Saturday, November 7 at 9:30 PM
Walerian Borowczyk / A Private Collection / 1973 / 14min / Tamasa Distribution / France
A witty and eye-opening tour through Borowczyk’s own collection of vintage erotica. “A Private Collection” marks the turning-point between Borowczyk’s career as a highly-regarded animator and surrealist filmmaker, and his subsequent career in the sexploitation field.
Restored in 4K in 2026 by Friends of Walerian Borowczyk at Fixafilm laboratory, from a 35mm internegative and the original 35mm negative. Funding provided by Polski Instytut Sztuki Filmowej.
Walerian Borowczyk / Immoral Tales / 1974 / 126min / AGFA / France
The first explicitly erotic feature from the notorious director of The Beast, Immoral Tales presents a veritable cavalcade of depravity in four stories. Structured in reverse chronological order as if to suggest that the same issues recur constantly throughout human civilization, whether involving notorious historical figures like Lucrezia Borgia and Erzsébet Báthory or present-day teenagers, Immoral Tales would transform Walerian Borowczyk’s image from brilliant but obscure avant-garde artist to one of Europe’s most confrontational filmmakers when it came to trampling on sexual taboos.
Gavotte / Lulu
Thursday, November 12 at 10:00 PM
Walerian Borowczyk / Gavotte / 1967 / 12min / DCP / Friends of Walerian Borowczyk / France
The short takes its title and dramatic cues from a baroque gavotte by Jean-Philippe Rameau, which plays on a harpsichord off-camera. Set within a painterly, period living room, the film unfolds like a bizarre and humorous game of musical chairs. It follows two bored dwarves who engage in a petty, escalating fight over a cushion and a place in an armchair. Through its manic, stationary shots and burlesque gags, the short makes a delightful, sadomasochistic mockery of aristocratic decorum.
Walerian Borowczyk / Lulu / 1980 / 95min / DCP / Studio TF1 / France
The story of a sexually-enticing young dancer who rises in society through her relationships with wealthy men, but later falls into poverty and prostitution, culminating in an encounter with Jack “the Ripper.”
The Greatest Love of All Time / The Margin
Wednesday, November 18 at 10:00 PM
Walerian Borowczyk / The Greatest Love of All Time / 1977 / 10min / DCP / Tamasa Distribution / France
A close-up portrait of the Paris-based Serbian erotic surrealist painter Ljuba Popović as he works in his studio. It avoids conventional interviews or biographies, instead using fragmentary close-ups, handheld camera work, and a frantic stream-of-consciousness montage to capture the physical texture of wet paint and the artist’s creative process.
Walerian Borowczyk / The Margin / 1976 / 88min / DCP / Janus Films / France
A businessman leaves his country home, and wife and young son for a business trip to Paris. While there he develops a sexual and spiritual bond with a call girl.
Rosalie / Blanche
Friday, November 20 at 4:00 PM
Walerian Borowczyk / Rosalie / 1966 / 15min / DCP / Friends of Walerian Borowczyk / France
Of all his films, Borowczyk’s favorite was Rosalie. Based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant, Borowczyk relates the plight of a servant girl who killed and buried her child in the garden. Featuring a profoundly touching performance by Ligia Borowczyk, once again Borowczyk uses animated objects to relate (horrific) action indirectly. An over-exposed, chiaroscuro image gives the proceedings an ethereal quality halfway between one of Beckett’s monologues and David Lynch’s Eraserhead.
Walerian Borowczyk / Blanche / 1971 / 94min / DCP / France
Blanche is the young, pure, beautiful wife of the Master of the castle, in a secluded land. Every man is in love with her, including the King and his servant Bartolomeo, visiting the Master.
The Story of Sin
Saturday, November 21 at 10:00 PM
Walerian Borowczyk / The Story of Sin (Dzieje grzechu) / 1975 / 124min / DCP / WFDiF / Poland
Based on the novel by Polish writer Stefan Żeromski. The film follows Ewa Pobratynska, a young woman whose passionate love affair leads her into a tragic journey of obsession, sacrifice, and moral transgression. Set against the social conventions of turn-of-the-century Poland, Borowczyk explores desire, religious hypocrisy, and the destructive consequences of forbidden love.
Walerian Borowczyk (1923–2006) was a Polish filmmaker, animator, painter, graphic artist, screenwriter, and production designer. He studied painting and graphic arts in Kraków, graduating in 1951. In 1956, he began collaborating with Jan Lenica, and their animated film Once Upon a Time (1957) brought them international recognition. Borowczyk moved permanently to Paris in 1959, where he continued making animated films, short live-action films, and feature films. A pioneering figure in Polish animation, Borowczyk developed a distinctive visual language combining cut-outs, photographs, paintings, found objects, and unconventional editing techniques. His animated works helped establish animation as an art form capable of exploring complex philosophical and human themes. From the late 1960s, he increasingly turned to live-action filmmaking, making films including Goto, Isle of Love (1968), Rosalie (1966), Blanche (1971), Immoral Tales (1974), and The Story of Sin (1975). His work is characterized by extraordinary visual imagination, surrealist grotesque, dark humor, and an exploration of eroticism, desire, and human nature. Borowczyk received numerous international awards, including the Max Ernst Award in 1967 for his contribution to animated cinema.
Co-presented by the American Cinematheque and the Polish Cultural Institute New York, with additional support from the Polish Film Institute.
