Monday, September 30, 2013

Ryszard Bugajski on his new film, The Closed Circuit

Found a brief, subtitled clip on Youtube from Polish director Ryszard Bugajski, talking about his new film, The Closed Circuit, playing on October 2nd at the VIFF. You can also find Bugajski's controversial 1982 film The Interrogation on Youtube; a Polish-only, subtitle-free version of his last feature, General Nil; and, indeed, his shot-in-Ontario 1991 film Clearcut. It's sad that at present these are the only ways to see these films here (unless you cough up money for a Region 2 DVD of General Nil, or happen to have a VHS player, since The Interrogation and Clearcut both came out in that format). Bugajski is a very provocative filmmaker - his bio on IMDB reveals that he collaborated with Andrej Wajda in the 1970's, vowed to help bring down the state after being asked to spy for them, and that his first feature, The Interrogation, was banned by authorities, but circulated on bootleg VHS tapes, and later, after the fall of Communism, became "the official Polish entry at Cannes" (which is why some listings give it as being from the 1990's). There's stuff in Clearcut - my favourite of his films - that is absolutely fearless in its honesty, that ventures into places I've never seen Canadian cinema go before or since... This is a filmmaker who should be better known! The Closed Circuit is reviewed in Variety here...

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