早逝的东欧电影怪才。波兰电影馆出品2DVD包括他的8部实验短片和实验纪录片。 Wojciech Wiszniewski （1946-1981）Born in 1946 and prematurely died in the age of 35, Wojciech Wiszniewski has been traditionally regarded as the most radical representative of the so called creational current in Polish documentary of the 70s, which boasted such filmmakers as Grzegorz Krolikiewicz, marek Koterski, Piotr Szulkin and BOgdan Dziworski. This school renounced cognitive passivity and minimalism of form, hitherto seen as documentary attributes, as well as the view that all a documentary filmmaker had to do was merely observe and record reality with the use of a fraction of the available means of expression, i.e. by relinquishing all the cinematic tools regarded as strictly reserved for feature films. In the 70s, when the lin ebetween a documentary and fiction was precisely deifned and not to be crossed, this bordered on heresy. Representatives of the creational approach broke conventional shackles by employing bold techniques oforaming, photographing and distorting sound, as well as through metaphoric use of editing, special effects, orchestrated scenes and devices aimed at creating rather than portraiting the reality before the camera. Wiszniewski thus pioneered an exceedingly radical approach, hence the ongoing, heated debate as to the genre into which his films should fall. Wojciech Wiszniewski was a son of a lawyer Wlodzimierz Wiszniewski, who died when the boy was only five. In order to make ends meet his mother Irena Czajkowska decided to rent rooms in their apartment to the students of the Film School in Lódz. Thanks to that her two sons got acquainted with a lot of future renowned film directors, such as Roman Polanski, Andrzej Kostenko, Stefan Schabenbeck or Henryk Kluba. The two brothers got so fascinated with cinema and carefree lives of film-makers that they decided to make their living in the same way. And they both succeeded in it. Wojciech became a director, while his elder brother Wlodzimierz Wiszniewski started his acting career. Between 1965 and 1969 Wojciech Wiszniewski was a student at the world-famous PWSFTviT (Polish National Academy of Film, Theatre and TV in Lódz). The first two years he spent in the Department of Cinematography and then moved to the Department of Directing due to various health problems (bad eyesight, heart failures). Wiszniewski was one of the school's best and most promising students. His fellow students on the same year included Marcel Lozinski, Tomasz Zygadlo and Maciej Wojtyszko. He managed to make merely 12 films (6 student shorts, 5 documentary short subjects and 1 TV feature) before his premature death of heart attack at the age of 34. In spite of this Wiszniewski has been considered one of the most outstanding personalities of his generation and without a doubt a classic of Polish documentary cinema. Although his shorts made him a master of innovative documentary film-making, most of them were shelved by the government censors, who also disabled him to eventually make his own feature debut. The last years of his life he spent fighting for making an adaptation of the novel "Królobójcy" ('King Slayers') by Jerzy Lojek about the kidnapping of King Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski by the Bar Confederates. Wiszniewski died suddenly a few days before the shooting was scheduled to begin.

The film inspired Andrzej Wajda to make his acclaimed movie 'Czlowiek z marmuru (1977)'. Before shooting began Wojciech Wiszniewski went to Silesia in order to ask 'Kazimierz Kutz' if it was possible to make a true movie about Silesia without knowing it at all. Kutz answered it was not. But eventually it did not stop Wiszniewski from making the film, which later Kutz found surprisingly good. (From IMDB) A movie quintessential to Wiszniewski's artistic output. Its protagonist, Bernard Budgol, is a miner and a legendary leader of socialist labour in the 40s and 50s. Structured around a dissonance and contradiction, the film is reminiscent of a broken mirror. Budgol's utterances do not for a cohesive whole, but come into conflict with one another. His wife, children and fellow miners tend to be crtical of him while the protagonist himself feels compelled to defend his legend and the rightousness of his own conduct. (From KG)

The film was banned in Poland for seven years due to realistic depiction of the life in the suburbs of Lódz as well as portraying in it local authorities, who rush the lead character into unhappy marriage. Actress Malgorzata Potocka was set to play the role of Halina, but she then left Poland for a while and was eventually replaced by Malgorzata Pritulak.

The film is reminiscent of "Gosciminska" by virtue of both analogy and a reversal. Both films are based on a written text - a colloquially worded document written and read out by the protagonist, which initially takes form of curriculum vitae, but as it progresses begins to sound more like a letter of complaint. The protagonist's account spans from the pre-war to the post-war period. What is reversed is the relationship accounts and the film footage illustrating them. The unique method of editing archive material is particularly worthy of note. As each take is replayed a number of times the footage looses its credibility.

This extraordinary picture does not fit into any genre. It is a freak of nature, a acinematic oddity like no other. It took considerable bravery and imaginatio, or perhaps a bliss of ignorance as to the implication of one's actions (common to the artists), to make a film in which for the most part people recite the alphabet. The primer symbolises a key to the people communicate and perceive the world and traditions. The film is premeated with ugliness and lifelessness, which are extraordinary lit and beautifully captured by Jerzy Zielinski's camera. Tradition is dead, communication between people has become ossified in its banal formats, we all know the letters of the alphabet but cannot put them into sentences which would express out true selves.