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 ...  (more)

The head of a failing French family thinks that fate has smiled down on him when the daughter of a wealthy man agrees to be married to his son. The daughter and her aunt then travel out to the French countryside to meet with the family, unaware that a mysterious ...  (more)

An inventor builds a homemade spacecraft, and uses it to have various adventures, including peeping at women, visiting ‘human’ planets, and becoming involved in intergalactic warfare.  (more)

Hugo, a vain clothing buyer, meets Myriam on a train and pursues a relationship with her. He is delighted to learn she is a prostitute and has no idea she has more in mind than Hugo bargained for.  (more)

A short film advertising the newspaper Sztandar Młodych (The Banner of Youth), noteworthy for its abstract elements painted directly onto film stock. An attempt at showing the complexity of the world in a capsule, the film reflects the new policy of the openness to ...  (more)

In 19th century London, a sex maniac sneaks into the engagement party of Dr. Henry Jekyll and Miss Fanny Osbourne, turning the event into a nightmarish whirlpool of murder and debauchery  (more)

Lulu models for a young painter who tries to seduce her. When her husband enters the room he dies from a heart attack. Lulu marries the painter, who commits suicide when he finds out that she has been having a long standing affair with Dr Schon and whose son gives ...  (more)

Based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant, Borowczyk relates the plight of a servant girl who killed and buried her child in the garden.  (more)

Borowczyk’s portrait of the painter Bona Tibertelli de Pisis and her erotic fusions of men, women and molluscs.  (more)

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 ...  (more)

Blanche is the young, pure, beautiful wife of the Master of the castle, in a secluded land. Every man is in love with her, including the King and his servant Bartolomeo, visiting the Master.  (more)

A businessman leaves his country home, and wife and young son for a business trip to Paris. While there he develops a sexual and spiritual bond with a call girl.  (more)

A beautiful Polish girl whose lover has gone to Rome to seek a divorce from his previous wife travels around Europe in search of him and suffers a variety of tragic adventures as the men around her try to fit her into their own selfish schemes.  (more)

"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 ...  (more)

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 ...  (more)

In an isolated community on a mythical island, a pompous dictator holds public executions and lets criminals fight in the streets.  (more)

An experimental short film by Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica.  (more)

Four erotic tales from in various historical eras. The first, 'The Tide', is set in the present day, and concerns a student and his young female cousin stranded on the beach by the tide, secluded from prying eyes. 'Therese Philosophe' is set in the nineteenth ...  (more)

During a hospital stay in 2001, the Polish painter, sculptor and filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk compiled a handwritten list of the objects and animals that were featured in his films. While he had used both encyclopedias and dictionaries to order chaos in his own ...  (more)

A documentary celebrating the work of Walerian Borowczyk, a director of unparalleled sensitivity, revered in the 1970s, who was later labeled as a maker of erotic movies.  (more)