On January 2, 2012 I wrote the following:
__________________________________
I hope that what appears to have been a successful and long overdue theatrical run of Possession turns into a much needed career retrospective for Andrzej Zulawski at some film center in the New York City area. For years now, I've felt that Zulawski is the most criminally unknown or undervalued living master director, especially in the United States. His body of work is stunning and comes from such a personal place.
_________________________________
Dreams actually surface occasionally in life. Proof of this exists in the form of the first ever US complete Andrzej Zulawski retrospective taking place at BAM. The unbelievable series begins this Wednesday, March 7th and runs until Tuesday, March 20th. All Zulawski films but one will screen in 35mm, there will be 4 new prints projected and all live subtitles which will take place for assorted films are director approved. Initially, Zulawski was scheduled to attend the opening night which consists of his amazing debut feature, The Third Part of the Night but unfortunately an unforeseen health issue will prevent him from traveling to the states. This retrospective is an extremely important film event as it is bound to shed much needed light on Zulawski's astonishing filmography. BAM is to be commended for this brilliant and daring stroke of essential film programming. Here is the complete schedule for Hysterical Excess: Discovering Andrzej Zulawski:
http://www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=4072
My immense excitement for the series was followed by the immediate thought that Zulawski would dislike or even hate the title of the series. I thought back to a moving and insightful Q & A that Stephen Thrower and Daniel Bird conducted with Zulawski back in 1998 for Thrower's Eyeball magazine. Here is an excerpt pertaining to the word hysteria...
Stephen Thrower: One thing that is interesting, and disappointing, about the responses to your films in the English-speaking world is that you've been 'accused' of...hysteria...
Andrez Zulawski: (simultaneously) ...hysteria, I love this word (laughs). I know it by heart now, absolutely.
Stephen Thrower: It's not a criticism I'd make, but how do you respond to this... 'judgement'?
Andrez Zulawski: I don't exactly know. They amalgamate together this super-activity, this energy, this shrieking quality. You have to know how to do it. Whisper, everybody can... go and shriek. It's much more difficult, if you're civilized! (laughs). They put this one word on it, call it hysteria, and I think by default it shows what's lacking in them. I mean they should shriek some times, they should yell, or run or do something.
FABPress released the indispensable Eyeball Compendium back in 2003. It is a fantastic book that compiles assorted articles on strange and fascinating art, horror and exploitation films. The book contains a number of magnificent writings by both Stephen Thrower and Daniel Bird on the films of Andrzej Zulawski:
http://fabpress.com/vsearch.php?CO=FAB047
Sure enough, J. Hoberman spoke with Zulawski on the phone recently for his piece on the series for The New York Times and Zulawski had this to say about hysteria...
" 'Hysterical' is a word I abhor," Mr. Zulawski said when reached by telephone in Warsaw.
The whole New York Times article is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/movies/hysterical-excess-andrzej-zulawski-films-at-bamcinematek.html?_r=2&smid=tw-nytimesmovies&seid=auto
http://mondo-vision.com/futurereleases.php
Out of nowhere, the great Finders Keepers record label has just released the amazing Possession soundtrack by Andrzej Korzynski. Incredibly, this soundtrack has never been released until now. Other formats of the soundtrack are most likely to appear along with more Korzynski soundtrack music for Zulawski films:
http://www.b-music.us/discog_fkrmc003.html
