U–jazdowski recommends – Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art

17/03/2020

• Today at our cinema we were going to show  Eastern European films from the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen’s archive. The screening will take place at a later date, but to remain on topic, we suggest you explore the Legendary Shorts section on the festival's website. Short films that made the history of the festival – and the history of experimental cinema in general – are realeased online every week.  You’ll find short films by Bruce Conner, Stan Brakhage, Joyce Wieland (her short Cat Food, if you missed our Party’s Over film review last year!), Orson Welles, Dagie Brundert (whom we also recently hosted), the Quay Brothers and many more. Enjoy the show!
• → https://www.kurzfilmtage.de/archiv/legendary-shorts/2020
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18/03/2020

• A story about a creative collaboration between two artists—an actress and a director, who were also involved in the feminist movement. When mass feminist movement developed in France in the '70s, Delphine Seyrig—a leading lady of European cinema, starring in films by Alain Resnais, François Truffaut, and Luis Buñuel—began working with the independent video artist Carole Roussopoulos. Using a lightweight portable camera, they jointly documented street demonstrations and created experimental film manifestos. They sought to maximise the potential of the video medium— with its immediacy and accessibility—to broaden the representation of women's experiences.

  In 2009, a few months before her death, Roussopoulos began working on a film about Seyrig; the unfinished project was continued by her granddaughter, who created a documentary about both artists. Callisto McNulty explores the period of their intense engagement in feminist activism, including the fight to legalize abortion (Seyrig was among the signatories of the famous "Manifesto of the 343"), the rights of sex workers and opposition to misogyny in the film industry. A large part of this acclaimed documentary is dedicated to Delphine’s roles in films directed by  Chantal Akerman (Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels) and Marguerite Duras (India Song), which were an important precedent for the collaboration between actresses and directors. (Michalina Augusiak)

• The film is available free of charge on the platform Arte.
  → https://www.arte.tv/pl/videos/078726-000-A/delphine-i-carole-nieposluszne
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19/03/2020

• Today’s recommendation is dedicated to all film geeks—one of Guy Maddin's latest films has been made available by the artist free of charge! Green Fog is a true cinephile’s mad idea : a remake of Hitchcock's Vertigo as well as a film portrait of San Francisco, stitched together from fragments of archival footage. 
• → https://vimeo.com/356966508 
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20/03/2020

• For casual Friday—Transformers! Mind you, we’re  not recommending you watch the Michael Bay films and sequels, but a PREMAKE. Transformers: The Premake (a desktop documentary) is a video essay by Kevin B. Lee—one of the pioneers and stars of videographic film criticism. Just under half an hour long, the film is a reflection about the Internet’s role as a source of infinite information, and the fact that it has become  a way of experiencing reality. By working with materials available online , Lee looks at fan culture and wonders about the impact and effects of Hollywood's activities in the globalised world. He does this by creating and perfecting the desktop documentary formula—a film in which a computer desktop replaces the camera.
• → https://vimeo.com/94101046 
• → https://www.alsolikelife.com/premake-1: here you can find more about the project and „a desktop documentary” method. 
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21/03/2020

• It’s Saturday afternoon and we suggest you relax at home with experimental films and the British landscape. LUX presents a  series of "online exhibitions". Landscape into Film is a selection of films in which artists explore nature, and especially the landscape, as a theme and inspiration. You will find such groundbreaking works as David Hall's Vertical or Paul Bush's The Cow’s Drama—a portrait of a cow living on a Welsh hill, which is a study in looking at non-humans and the role of the camera. This aesthetic selection is  as analogue as can be on the Internet!
• → https://lux.org.uk/online-exhibition/landscape-into-film 
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22/03/2020

• A delightful postcolonial melodrama that mesmerizes with its black and white photography. When the energetic octogenarian Aurora’s health begins to deteriorate, she asks her neighbour  to find the mysterious Gianluca. Aurora’s old flame recounts an incredible story about obsessive love and crime worthy  of an adventure film. It turns out that fifty years earlier, Aurora was the owner of a large farm in Africa.
• → https://vod.pl/film…/tabu-caly-film-za-darmo-online/173ww4j…
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23/03/2020

• Patients and staff of the La Borde psychiatric hospital put on a summer play—this year, Operetta by Witold Gombrowicz. Preparations for the big event and everyday life in the hospital are filmed—tenderly and wisely—by director and philosopher Nicolas Philibert.
• → http://www.ubu.com/film/philibert_thing.html
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24/03/2020

• A short documentary by Michalina Musielak, screened at  our cinema in 2017 as part of the New Hope [Nowa Nadzieja] review dedicated to the most interesting new films in Polish cinema.
  A group of women are preparing for a  beauty pageant. "Straighten up! Turn! Stop! Smile! Bow!" – commands the choreographer. The tension is palpable. Neither the  limousine out front nor the room brimming with an elegant, though somewhat bored audience help calm the nerves Watch a beauty pageant, to which the initial selection took place almost 80 years ago.
• → https://vod.pl/filmy-dokumentalne/miss-holocaust/c2114ql#info 
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25/03/2020

• Today we were supposed to start a new film review entitled "Decolonizing the Screen." We have to postpone that for a bit, but let today's film serve as an informal launch of  the review.
  Ben Russel—one of the best and most important filmmakers working at the crossroads of documentary, experimental film and ethnography—shares some of his films for free. Among them, He Who Eats Children—a speculative portrait of a Dane living in the Suriname jungle. He repairs motorboats,and is also accused of devouring children.
• → https://vimeo.com/153317702
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26/03/2020

• Today in our online cinema, we recommend... another cinema! Arsenal – a film institution dedicated to the promotion of visual arts and experimental film which runs one of the best cinemas in the world and hosts the most important (at least for us) sections of the Berlinale festival, that is Forum and Forum Expanded – has opened its online picture house to everyone for the duration of the pandemic! A new set of a dozen or so films is posted every week. To watch, just go to their website and log into Arsenal 3 (login: arsenal3, password: stayhealthy). This week you’ll find films by such filmmakers as Clemens von Wedemeyer and Daniel Kötter – we screened both their work at our cinema not long ago – as well as many other artists.

• → https://www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/join/arsenal-3/

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31/03/2020

• Thanks to the collaboration of Mubi and Europa Cinemas, the Cinema at Ujazdowski Castle is the first in Warsaw to take advantage of free access for three-months to Mubi— a platform (website) presenting films from festivals as well as independent and experimental cinema. Titles that can be viewed online change cyclically and there are about thirty of them at one time. To take advantage of the three-month trial period for new users, please register here:

• → https://mubi.com/u-jazdowski

• Michał Matuszewski, the curator of the Cinema, recommends:

• The Daughters of Fire

  • [Las hijas del fuego], directed by Albertina Carri, Argenina 2018, 116'
    Two female lovers reunite after a long time. One wants to shoot a porn film, the other wants to visit her family. As they happen upon a woman during a bar fight with homophobes, they decide to hit the road, embarking on a polyamorous journey across Patagonia, picking up other women along the way.

• The Border Fence

  • [Die Bauliche Massnahme], directed by Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Austria 2018, 112'
    In precisely composed shots, Nikolaus Geyrhalter explores the few square kilometers around the Brenner Pass, telling an urgent story about Europe in the process.

• VHS Massacre: Cult Films and the Decline of Physical Media

  • [VHS Massacre], directed by Kenneth Powell, Thomas Edward Seymour, USA 2015, 72'
    This documentary explores the rise and fall of physical media and its effect on independent and cult films, as well as B-movies. Ranging from the origin of home movies through the video store era, and featuring icons like Joe Bob Briggs, Lloyd Kaufman, Greg Sestero, Debbie Rochon, and Deborah Reed.

08/04/2020

• We hope that you are watching films on Mubi, making the most of our offer! However, we have not stopped recommending great experimental films that are  unique, free and legally available elsewhere.  Especially since you can watch a set of films by Barbara Hammer, one of the pioneers of avant-garde, and the heroine of our retrospective in 2016, on Vimeo. You’ll find some of her best-known films, such as Dyketactics, as well as her less frequently shown works. The films are available for free – but if you are feeling inspired, you can donate to Hammer’s foundation.

• → https://vimeo.com/showcase/incompanywith

10/04/2020

• When the International Rotterdam Film Festival asked Kevin B. Lee to prepare an introductory video essay on the film Lighthouse, the director didn’t have access to the original materials from the film. He decided to create a remake/fanfic – his own version assembled from 36 films with  Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe. The effect, courtesy of the creator, can now be admired free of charge! 

• → https://vimeo.com/384782576

16/04/2020

Don’t forget about our ongoing collaboration with MUBI: a free 3-month trial for our viewers! All you need to do is register at: https://mubi.com/pl/u-jazdowski. New films appear on the website every day (while other ones disappear). Among a treasure chest of films, we especially recommended three:

• Rat Film

  • directed by Theo Anthony, USA 2016, 83'
    A documentary about rats in the city, it is also a visual essay on racism in Baltimore, which we presented as part of the 2018 Posthuman Cinema film review. Anthony not only shows the complexity of rat and human relationships, but also problematizes the issue of showing animal death on screen and breaks away from the common practice of portraying rats as an abject, lethal threat to humans.

• The Grand Bizarre

  • directed by Jodie Mack, USA 2018, 61'
    A unique documentary about the global textile industry in the form of a musical, abstract animation with numerous humorous elements that  bursts with colours ; shot on 16 mm tape.

• Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti

  • directed by Maya Deren, Cherel Ito, Teiji Ito, USA 1985, 45'
    This film-poem edited from materials shot by Maya Deren depicts Haitian voodoo rituals – from dance to possession. Inspired by surrealism, Deren shot the film in the form of a collage composed of a series of oneiric sequences, showing the fusion of art and ethnography.

24/04/2020 

Today, we return to a  cinema we’ve mentioned before – Arsenal –  to recommend three titles, which you can watch for free for two weeks by registering at https://www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/join/arsenal-3/login.html (login: arsenal3, password: stayhealthy):

• the documentary Harun Farocki - Zweimal (2019) about the German filmmaker, told from the perspective of two directors – Ingo Kratisch and Lothar Schuster;

• The Performer (2015) by Maciej Sobieszczański and Łukasz Ronduda – a story of the artist Oskar Dawicki and an experiment that combines cinema with performance and an art exhibition;

• Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press (1984), a unique adaptation of the classic novel directed by Ulrike Ottinger, starring the model Veruschka – also known for her role in Antonioni’s Blowup – as Dorian Gray.
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29/04/2020

• Jean-Luc Godard’s Instagram masterclass is now available with English subtitles! See what the pioneer of the French New Wave has to say about cinema closures, the virus, his old films and new project ideas.

• → https://vimeo.com/411300705