A poet, painter, composer, video artist, and filmmaker, Lech Majewski is also, in the recent words of Washington Post critic Philip Kennicott, “a major discovery.” Whether based on legends or true events, grounded in both surrealist dreams and the inescapable atrocities of Central European reality, Majewski's films merge cinema, prose, music, and art, sampling from the cinematic visions of Federico Fellini, Frantisek Vlácil, and Wojciech Has, the surrealist writings of Bruno Schulz, the stately arrangements of composers Henryk Gorecki and Philip Glass, and art movements as disparate as the Silesian mystics and Matthew Barney.
Born in Katowice, Poland, Majewski graduated from the influential Lodz Film School in 1977. After directing two films in his native Poland (including 1980's The Knight), Majewski emigrated abroad, fashioning a career as diverse in locations as it is in disciplines. In addition to making films (often acting as cinematographer, composer, and production designer), Majewski has directed theater productions in the U.K., Germany, and Poland, helmed operas (including a 1995 Polish National Opera version of Bizet's Carmen that was transmitted live by Canal+), written books (he's published over thirteen volumes of poetry and prose), composed scores, and recently begun a series of video installation art.
Majewski will appear in person at several screenings. Please join us in welcoming “a brilliant filmmaker whose haunting aesthetic is formed of much deeper stuff, processed through a lively mind and idiosyncratic imagination, chastened and tempered by history, and captured on screen with the rigor and perfectionism of an artist who might also carve castles out of toothpicks” (Kennicott, Washington Post).