Stefan & Franciszka
“I am not a noun, I'm a verb,” states the sprightly Stefan Themerson as he paces the porch of the London home where he lives with his wife, the painter Franciszka Themerson. When they left Poland in 1938, Stefan Themerson was a novelist, poet, and illustrator of adult and children's books; Franciszka was a painter of international reknown. Together, they had been pioneers in the Polish avant-garde cinema; their experiments included “cameraless” photography-- photomontage (a strong tradition in Poland) and photograms--and their influence extended to an early filmmakers' cooperative. Joining the Polish Army in Exile in France and then in England, they remained active in the anti-fascist movement throughout the war, while they continued to make films and publish illustrated books which they call “best lookers, not best sellers.” In this colorful and concise portrait of the Themersons, Tomasz Pobog-Malinowski captures--through film clips, drawings, paintings and the artists' own accounts--a world of continuing activity, centered in the home which, these days, the peripatetic artists rarely leave.