1971 film by Walerian Borowczyk

1983 film by Walerian Borowczyk

The first episode – featuring frequent Borowczyk muse Marina Pierro – is the longest and, in a way, most substantial: it’s set in Renaissance Rome, with the lusty (and perpetually nude) leading lady sexually involved with famous painters and church benefactors. The second episode is the most notorious and, consequently, gave the film its controversial poster – featuring a rabbit slowly disappearing under the skirt of a teenage girl (played by Gaelle Legrand). The third and final episode, which has a modern-day setting, is the shortest – but also, possibly, the most outrageous: Pascale Christophe is a young married woman who’s abducted on a busy Parisian street by a small-time hood hidden inside a cardboard box!

Dir. Walerian Borowczyk (France, 1975)
This is the portrait of painter Bona Tibertelli De Pisis - wife of writer Pieyre De Mandiargues � while working in her atelier, together with fragments of her graphic works inspired by one of Remy de Gourmont誷 writings.

A polish soldier is drilled before the camera.

Born in Kwilicz, near Poznań, he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, then devoted himself to painting and lithography [1], including the creation of posters for the cinema [2], which earned him a national prize in 1953. In 1959, he settled in Paris.
His early films were surreal animations, some only a few seconds long, including several comic abecedaria. His most acclaimed early films were Był sobie raz (Once Upon A Time) (1957) and Dom (House) (1958, with Jan Lenica). In 1959, he worked with Chris Marker for Les Astronautes. Major works of this period include the nightmarish Jeux des anges (1964) and the stop motion film Renaissance (1963), which uses reverse motion to depict various destroyed objects (a prayer book, a stuffed toy, etc.) re-assembling themselves, only to be destroyed again when the last object (a bomb) is complete. In 1967, he directed his first animated feature film, Théâtre de Monsieur & Madame Kabal: un film dessiné pour les adultes (Mr. and Mrs. Kabal's Theatre).

"Theatre of Mr. and Mrs. Kabal" is Walerian Borowczyk’s first feature-length film and his last animated film. It consists of a sequence of loosely connected scenes, much like a vaudeville program, in which Mr. and Mrs. Kabal perform absurd, surreal, and sometimes cruel acts.

The film takes place before, during and immediately after the engagement party of Dr.Henry Jekyll and Miss Fanny Osborne, attended by numerous highly respectable guests (a general, a doctor, a priest, a lawyer), the last of which informs the company that a child has been murdered in the street outside. While the others watch a young dancer perform, Dr.Jekyll instructs the lawyer to alter his will, leaving everything to a certain Mr.Hyde. Shortly afterwards, the dancer is found murdered, and the guests realise that one of their number must be a maniac with a prodigious sexual appetite...

In 1976 Borowczyk was commissioned by ZDF’s Eckart Stein to make an experimental portrait portrait of his adopted home, Paris. Shooting on 16mm film cartridges using a compact, clockwork Krasnogorsk movie camera, Borowczyk presents the French capital as an urban hell. Unlike the ‘city symphonies’ of Vertov and Ruttmann, there is no optimism here, but rather the loneliness of an atomised, overly mechanical and resoundingly consumerist society. A brief glimpse of a giant billboard advertising The Margin testifies to the sheer range of Borowczyk’s vision. Also, look out for Borowczyk’s reflection behind the eyepiece of his camera…

A zealous, handsome priest, who is the confessor for a convent full of women, encourages the equally zealous abbess of the institution to enforce strict rules on these unfortunate women. At the same time, a particularly disturbed nun manages to poison herself and many of the other novitiates in yet another scandal which is covered up by church authorities.

Three stories. A solitary sailor falls from his boat and washes ashore on a tropical island. While seeking rescue, he's found by a nearly naked woman who is playful and compliant. He decides to erase his signs of distress and remain on the island. What awaits? In the second, an adolescent searches for the words of a nursery rime he remembers bits of. His journey takes him into dreams, sexual awakening, and Oedipal fantasy. Third, a man of wealth in late-nineteenth century Paris hires a prostitute for the night. She's also cabaret performer and takes him to her room. He fears he's about to be robbed.

Walerian Borowczyk's 1980 film Lulu was based on the eponymous character created by Frank Wedekind.
"Lulu" tracks the rise and fall of a beguiling dancer whose sexuality is tied directly to her fortunes. The titular nymph-like seductress flits from romance to romance, strategically positioning herself for social and financial gain. Each of her lovers embodies a Victorian archetype, from the old professor showing off what would now be called a "trophy wife" to the bohemian artist to the bourgeois newspaperman to the naive young man. Borowczyk's adaptation of Wedekind's melodramas emphasizes the satirical nature of the story, skewering upper middle class attitudes towards sexual relationships.

a short film by Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica