On early Wednesday, February 17th Andrzej Żuławski, a defining voice of contemporary world cinema, passed away. Shortly after the Berlin Critics’ Week had presented his last film COSMOS in attendance of his producer Paulo Branco. We mourn the death of the artist and will project his last film once more, on Sunday, February 21 at noon in the Hackesche Höfe cinema Berlin. We would love to welcome you there and celebrate his work with you.
Love, a form of insanity tolerated by society, a source of strength and life. Love is impossible without truth. Love, as Andrzej Żuławski once described in the title of one of his timeless films, is the most important thing. To experience a film by Andrzej Żuławski is to experience a radical love: restless, longing, moving, youthful, consuming minds and bodies.
He was a director who never hesitated to express large gestures, a director who challenged his actors to become gestures, to embrace expression, madness, and ultimately: love. L’AMOUR BRAQUE, MES NUITS SONT PLUS BELLES QUE VOS JOURS, LA NOTE BLEUE, LA FIDÉLITÉ – films inhabited by the director’s love to Sophie Marceau. Images that embody love, personifications of love.
The characters of his last film COSMOS get driven to insanity by a thirst for life, a thirst for love, grasping for words to describe the restlessness of their hearts and minds. Emotion becomes not tool but essence, confusion becomes natural, a game for all of us to engage in, to lose ourselves in.
Getting lost in the final film by Żuławski feels, after his hiatus of 15 years, as if he had never stopped to make films.
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COSMOS
D: Andrzej Żuławski, C: Andy Gillet, Clémentine Pons, Jean-François Balmer, Jonathan Genet, Johan Libéreau, DOP: André Szankowski, FR/PT 2015, 102 min., French OwEs
SundayFeb21, 12NOON
Hackesche Höfe Kino, Rosenthaler Straße 40/41 // Tickets here
The BERLIN CRITICS’ WEEK is an initiative of the German Film Critics Association (Verband der deutschen Filmkritik e.V.) in collaboration with the Heinrich Böll Foundation (Heinrich-Böll-Stifung e.V.), supported by The Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung/bpb).
