Walerian Borowczyk (aka Boro) was a graphic artist and motion picture virtuoso who seduced audiences with webs of hidden meanings, spanning dreams, history, mythology and eroticism. But this story has two heroes.

The demonic and incorrigible Boro grabbed critical and media attention for many years. He left behind a huge filmography and gained legendary status on the day he died.  He was a mysterious figure, never looking for publicity, rarely giving interviews and failing to promote himself among producers. Boro despised media buzz and the constant pursuit of fame in a market of vanity and rejected all superficial trends.  He hated unjustified criticism and treated ‘critics’ with reserve. The latter, not without reason, often accused him of arrogance and intolerance. He deliberately created the portrait of a withdrawn artist with an imagination that surpassed reality, tradition and memory. He trusted his intuition, feelings and analytical sense. His great sensitivity opened doors to the secrets of protohuman genetic instincts. Boro explored our animal nature like few others.

Once There Was (1957), the young artist’s co-debut with Jan Lenica (who later gained international fame), is the film that stands out in my memory. The short was immediately noticed by international audiences and made its way into the pantheon of animation.  Collage, montage, naïve lines and strokes, newspaper cuttings, humorous narrative.  It stays fresh and compelling from the initial bouncy letters to the final stop-motion frame.  Poetic and minimal, it appeals to viewers of all ages.  Looking back at Once There Was, one sees how the artist developed – from the bright and trustful to the darker sides of life.  Both faces are his.

I met Walerian Borowczyk in the early fifties.  When I remember him now, I realize I enter a realm clouded by half a century of facts – akin to looking at worn and faded photos.  Because of gaps in Borowczyk’s biography, it’s worth reconstructing those memories, as each detail of his life is priceless and crucial to decrypting the various riddles, visions and imaginative heights.

Let me start with his physical description, which set him apart wherever he went. A stout, strong body, dense, woolly hair, a short neck and piercing eyes.  It provoked anxiety and confusion.  We met in Warsaw, and I was immediately puzzled by Borowczyk’s expressive gestures and glances, which could replace standard verbal communication.  In attire, he was neat to the point of asceticism and minimalist in speech.  He represented an intriguing form of introversion, was absent in conversation and enclosed in his own thoughts. 

Boro spoke rarely but reacted enthusiastically to external stimuli.  He thus transformed into another man, with an amazing cognitive inquisitiveness laced with erudition. His interrupted monologues were intertwined with names of scientists and inventors, and I was both amazed and confounded by this knowledge.  During our cooperation on the script of Street Art (directed by Konstanty Gordon), I got closer to his way of thinking and was presented with one of his best-kept secrets.  It concerned Ligia, a film actress, his wife-to-be and heroine of Boro’s most erotic flicks.  She was very young and extremely beautiful, with a tamed, quiet sensuality that indeed was hard to resist.  Her sexual spirit was like that of de Sade’s salons.  Socially unavailable, she rarely appeared in public alone, staying at the side of her alert husband.

Ligia then moved to France, where she turned actress and became the star of Borowczyk’s troupe.  Even in their suburban Vesinet home and tabloid refuge, Ligia remained mysterious and ascetic, which so greatly contrasted her perverted on-screen roles, considered pornographic.  The know-it-all film critics never even noticed Ligia – the very woman behind Borowczyk’s sexual energy and vision.  Without the intuition of this traditionally educated girl, the liberated, sexually explicit erotic films would not have been created.

Walerian Borowczyk’s cinema of eroticism fell into conflict with the law and morality. Sex, however, was not the main motor of this art.  Rather, it was driven by the ”bestiary” – the bestial essence of man.  If he did violate morality, he did so on purpose.  He trusted his senses, and his oeuvres uncovered beauty even in visions of the inappropriate.

© Szymon Bojko 2006
This text originally appeared in the festival catalogue.