email print share on Facebook share on Twitter share on LinkedIn share on reddit pin on Pinterest

FUNDING Poland

Walerian Borowczyk and the K-202 for the Polish Film Institute

by 

- Financial support ranging from €12,000 to €90,000 has just been allocated by the Polish Film Institute to help documentary production

Walerian Borowczyk and the K-202 for the Polish Film Institute
Director Jakub Mikurda

The Polish Film Institute’s (PISF’s) first session of 2016 resulted in the decision to support 17 projects for an overall total of €665,000. Two documentaries amongst those supported stand out, both of which are feature debuts, receiving support of more than €80,000 each: Jakub Mikurda’s Love Express. The Strange Case of Walerian Borowczyk (€89,000) and Paulina Gawęcka’s Ahead of Bill (€82,000).

The committee’s decision to fund Jakub Mikurda’s project, which is devoted to Borowczyk (the Polish director and plastic artist), was surely not met with much debate, as the film will serve to fill a gap: indeed, although Borowczyk was considered one of European cinema’s greatest visionaries in the 1970s, he is, along with his films, relatively unknown in Poland. Of course, Mikurda’s documentary doesn’t concentrate solely on the life and phenomenon surrounding the director, who went from artistic cinema to producing soft-core pornography, not to mention the erotic episodes he made for a France 3 series. Mikurda really wants to broaden the film’s scope to cover major changes in attitudes towards sexuality, censorship and the counterculture of the 1970s and 1980s. Love Express. The Strange Case of Walerian Borowczyk will be produced by Colab Pictures and HBO

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

For her part, using her documentary Ahead of Bill (produced by the studio Tomasz Gaj Workshop) as her canvas, director Paulina Gawęcka has painted a portrait of her grandfather Jacek Karpinski, who, before and totally independently of Bill Gates, managed to build a personal computer between 1970 and 1973, the famous K-202.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

(Translated from French)

Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.

Privacy Policy