There has been a recent revival of interest in the work of Polish film director Walerian Borowczyk, a label-defying auteur and "escape artist" if there ever was one. This collection serves as an introduction and a guide to Borowczyk's complex and ambiguous body of work, including panoramic views of the director's output, focused studies of particular movies, and more personal, impressionistic pieces. Taken together, these contributions comprise a wide-ranging survey that is markedly experimental in character, allowing scholars to gain insight into previously unnoticed aspects of Borowczyk's oeuvre.

There has been a recent revival of interest in the work of Polish film director Walerian Borowczyk, a label-defying auteur and "escape artist" if there ever was one. This collection serves as an introduction and a guide to Borowczyk's complex and ambiguous body of work, including panoramic views of the director's output, focused studies of particular movies, and more personal, impressionistic pieces. Taken together, these contributions comprise a wide-ranging survey that is markedly experimental in character, allowing scholars to gain insight into previously unnoticed aspects of Borowczyk's oeuvre.

Warsaw- and London-based filmmakers Franciszka and Stefan Themerson are often recognized internationally as pioneers of the 1930s Polish avant-garde. Yet, from the turn of the century to the end of the 1920s, Poland's literary and art scenes were also producing a rich array of criticism and early experiments with the moving image that set the stage for later developments in the avant-garde. In this comprehensive and accessible study, Kamila Kuc draws on myriad undiscovered archival sources to tell the history of early Polish avant-garde movements-Symbolism, Expressionism, Futurism, and Constructivism-and to reveal their impact on later practices in art cinema.

This is the first comprehensive English-language account of the Polish avant-garde film, from its beginnings in the early decades of the last century to the collapse of communism in 1989. Taking a broad understanding of avant-garde film, this collection includes writings on the pioneering work of the internationally-acclaimed Franciszka and Stefan Themerson; the Polish Futurists' (Jalu Kurek, Anatol Stern) engagement with film; the Thaw and animation (Jan Lenica and Walerian Borowczyk, Andrzej Pawlowski, Zbigniew Rybczynski); documentary (Natalia Brzozowska, Kazimierz Karabasz, Wojciech Wiszniewski), Polish ?migr? filmmakers (Roman Polanski, Jerzy Skolimowski, Andrzej Zulawski) as well as essays and documentation on the highly influential Film Form Workshop (J?zef Robakowski, Ryszard Wasko, Wojciech Bruszewski). Including a mix of historical writings from early film magazines with commissioned essays, this book constitutes an important source on the rich, complex and diverse history of the Polish film avant-garde, which is presented from the perspective of both British (A. L. Rees, Jonathan Owen, Michael O'Pray) and Polish (Marcin Gizycki, Ryszard Kluszczynski, Kamila Kuc) authorities on the subject. This book is thus an indispensable introduction to the theories and practices of critically important avant-garde artists and filmmakers.

Warsaw- and London-based filmmakers Franciszka and Stefan Themerson are often recognized internationally as pioneers of the 1930s Polish avant-garde. Yet, from the turn of the century to the end of the 1920s, Poland's literary and art scenes were also producing a rich array of criticism and early experiments with the moving image that set the stage for later developments in the avant-garde. In this comprehensive and accessible study, Kamila Kuc draws on myriad undiscovered archival sources to tell the history of early Polish avant-garde movements-Symbolism, Expressionism, Futurism, and Constructivism-and to reveal their impact on later practices in art cinema.