Marcin Giżycki
Directing
Biography
Marcin Giżycki was a Polish film and art historian, critic, and filmmaker. He was a professor at the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology in Warsaw (since 2015), a Senior Lecturer at the Rhode Island School of Design (since 1988), and an Artistic Director of the ANIMATOR (festival) International Animated Film Festival Animator in Poznań, Poland (since 2007). He has authored eight books, co-edited two others, contributed photographs to four books by Agnieszka Taborska, and published around 400 articles on film and art in Polish and foreign publications. In 2016, he received the Award for the Outstanding Contribution to Animation Studies at Animafest, the World Festival of Animated Film in Zagreb, Croatia.
Known For
The Bug Trainer explores Starewitch’s creative ideas and concepts of his work, along with opinions from film critics and other animation directors to help us understand why he is considered one of the greatest creators of the animation world.
The Bug Trainer
No description available.
Zapaleńcy. Historia polskiego filmu animowanego
Waves wash ashore different objects, which gradually become associated with Roman Polanski's "Two Men and a Wardrobe".
Tide
Documentary film based on unique found footage shot in the 1920s by count August Zamoyski. A valuable insight into Polish artistic life between the world wars.
Sculptor with a Camera
Four men are waiting for a tram. Based on a painting by Zenon Wasilewski, the father of Polish animated film.
Sunset
In 1924, Henryk Berlewi, avant-garde artist affiliated with the constructivist group “Blok”, published his theory of “mechanofaktura” – innovative image-building solution based on the replacement of varied canvas texture with two-dimensional visual equivalents such as the rhythm of lines and planes, schematic combination of geometrical forms, and colour range reduced to black, red and white. By mechanising the means of expression Berlewi sought to arrive at the effect of texture variation without departing from the inherent two-dimensionality of painting. The movement generated by adding rhythm to the image was described by Berlewi as if he was describing a film, which prompted Marcin Giżycki to create this moving image reconstruction.
Kinefaktura
The film documents the performances and history of The American Magic-Lantern Theater, a troupe that recreates the 19th century spectacles of magic lantern shows - he live projected productions that preceded cinema over 100 years ago. AMLT, based in Connecticut, consists of two people, usually Terry Borton, founder and showman, and lead singer Nancy Stewart. The company has been performing for 20 years, is the only professional magic-lantern theater in the US, and is one of the only three existing in the world.
A Magic-Lantern Life
Turn right, go straight, turn left. A collage of photos of road signs, immortalized on Polaroid in the United States in the early 1990s. A game of ludo with photos and an example of unpretentious visual archeology. Where did the arrows lead? Could these places still exist?
Arrow Board Game
An animated essay on the color blue in 20th century art inspired by, among others, Eadweard Muybridge, Wassily Kandinsky, and Kazimir Malevich.