Walerian Borowczyk

Gas Guzzling Ghoulie (2009)

Three youths are abandoned on a road by their crazy mother. Suddenly appears a strange woman carrying a placard saying she's a guide. The guide brings the youths with her on an journey in the woods. A journey they will never forget. ...

The Expert Halima (1991)

Kamar, who just arrived at Bassra, falls in love with the young wife of the old Obeid. But, until now, nobody has survived to be able to praise himself for obtaining favors from this beautiful, capricious woman. ...

The Golden Lotus (1991)

Ximen Qing, a rich mandarin, deserts his wives to play with the courtesans. One of his young spouses, tired of languishing, consoles herself with a lackey. ...

Almanac of Addresses of the Ladies of Paris (1990)

During the French Revolution, a young aristocrat finds an almanac in a book store which contains the prettiest and strangest prostitutes living in Paris. ...

A Well-Deserved Punishment (1990)

From Boccaccio's "La précaution inutile". Jean, a rich old merchant, is blessed with a young and beautiful wife. Although Bianca is absolutely faithful, he, tormented by jealousy, accuses her of the worst depravities. ...

Infernal Symphony (1987)

The chance encounter between a rebel devil and a nubile angel. ...

Love Rites (1987)

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. ...

Emmanuelle 5 (1987)

Emmanuelle, the sexiest woman in the world, endures a streak of bad luck that begins when she's stripped by a mob of adoring fans at an international film festival. Emmanuelle's lousy luck continues when she's abducted from her yacht off the South of Franc ...

Art of Love (1983)

Young student Claudine has a dream in which the Roman student Cornelius, fascinated by the beautiful wife of the commander, attends lectures on the art of love of great Ovid. Ancient tragedy repeats itself in a few centuries ... ...

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne (1981)

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. ...

Lulu (1980)

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 s ...

Private Collections (1979)

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 awa ...

L'armoire (1979)

A man seeks for satisfaction from a prostitute working in a revue. He pays for the whole night and discovers a saddening truth about her. ...

Immoral Women (1979)

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 ben ...

Happy Toy (1979)

This short film by Walerian Borowczyk was made in 1979 but is so little known that when it was rediscovered in 2014 it had not been included in any of his filmographies. Of all Borowczyk's films, this is the one that most clearly shows his love of early ci ...

Behind Convent Walls (1978)

On the surface the women at the convent are your average nuns. However, what they get up to in their spare time is far from what you'd expect from nuns. ...

The Greatest Love of All Time (1977)

A portrait of Serb erotic surrealist painter Ljubomir "Ljuba" Popović. ...

The Margin (1976)

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. ...

The Beast (1975)

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 myst ...

Letter from Paris (1975)

Paris is a monstrously inhuman cityscape, in which cars, buses, crowds, and unceasing noise combine to smother any decent and delicate human activity. People and flowers attempt to survive in a city that seems ready to explode from an over-heated mixture o ...

The Story of Sin (1975)

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. ...

Venus on the Half-Shell (1975)

Borowczyk's portrait of the painter Bona Tibertelli de Pisis and her erotic fusions of men, women and molluscs. ...

Immoral Tales (1974)

Four erotic tales from 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 ...

A Private Collection (1972)

A witty and eye-opening tour through Borowczyk's own collection of vintage erotica. Originally intended as part of his 'Contes immoraux', it was released first as a separate short, and is therefore marks the turning-point between Borowczyk's career as a hi ...

Blanche (1972)

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. ...

Gunpoint (1972)

Semi-documentary exposé of scandalous hunting practices in the Sologne, a wooded area south of Orléans where he shared a house at the time. The film, part tribute to Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game (1939) and its celebrated hunting scene, is notable ...

Une collection particulière (noir et blanc) (1972)

Goto, Island of Love (1969)

A petty thief works his way up the absurd hierarchy of Goto, an archipelago cut off from civilisation by a tumultuous earthquake. His dream is to possess Glossia, a stifled beauty trapped in a loveless marriage to a melancholic dictator. ...

The Phonograph (1969)

An old phonograph assembles itself, plays songs on wax drums before self destructing. In many ways The Phonograph is a companion piece to Renaissance, there is nevertheless something quietly affecting about Borowczyk's final 'object' animation. ...

Gavotte (1968)

Two bored dwarves fight over a cushion. ...

Theatre of Mr. and Mrs. Kabal (1967)

"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 so ...

The Concert (1967)

A short film by Walerian Borowczyk. Ostensibly a film of a concert given by the round, unassuming Monsieur Kabal and his spiky, terrifying wife, it's actually a cover for their frequent attempts at causing each other extreme physical harm. ...

Renaissance (1967)

To the sound of trumpets, a collection of pulverised antique bric-a-brac begins to reassemble itself, revealing a stuffed owl, a cornet, a hamper, books, a doll, a plate – and a bomb... ...

Diptych (1967)

A short film by Walerian Borowczyk in two parts. The first 'panel' follows the morning routine of Leon Boyer who, despite being almost 100 years old, still farms the land, drives a vintage car, and plays with his two dogs. The second panel shows shots of b ...

The Games of Angels (1967)

Animated short. Abstract forms in a setting evocative of a concentration camp created by the universe. Based on a series of paintings by the Polish artists and filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk, Les Jeux des Anges takes the viewer into a nightmarish and siniste ...

Rosalie (1966)

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. ...

Joachim's Dictionary (1966)

A light-hearted animated romp through the alphabet, with each letter identified by both a word and a visual interpretation of that word, by the crudely-drawn Joachim. ...

Tom Thumb (1966)

An animated advert made by Walerian Borowczyk for a French pasta company. After being abandoned in the woods with no food, a group of children takes refuge in a nearby house. However, the hungry ogre that lives there is about to come home... ...

Grandma's Encyclopaedia (1965)

A short film by Walerian Borowczyk. This first volume looks at the first three letters in Grandma's encyclopaedia: A for 'Automobile', B for 'Ballon', and C for 'Chemin de fer'. ...

The Museum (1964)

An advert made by Walerian Borowczyk for a French pasta company. After everybody has left the museum, the paintings can finally come alive and help themselves to some pasta for dinner. ...

Holy Smoke! (1963)

An animated film made by Walerian Borowczyk for W.D. & H.O. Wills. A very pompous cigar smoker reminisces about the good old days when the lower classes knew their place and stayed away from cigars meant only for the privileged. However, after he and his s ...

The Astronauts (1959)

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. ...

The Magician (1959)

A short film by Walerian Borowczyk ...

Love Requited (1958)

About the work of the naive painter J. Plaskocinski. A playful tale about the requited love of a shy young man. ...

House (1958)

An experimental short film. ...

The School (1958)

Animated photographs (made with Jan Lenica) with elements of animated cartoon. A display of military drill. ...

Once Upon a Time (1957)

An oddball pair try to find their identity and place in an abstract world. ...

Banner of Youth (1957)

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 o ...

Street Art (1957)

A short news reel documentary about poster art. ...

Strip-Tease (1957)

Borowczyk and Lenica are at their most expressive in this crude paper miniature. ...

Love Express. The Disappearance of Walerian Borowczyk (2018)

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. ...

The Making of 'The Beast' (2015)

Camera operator Noël Véry provides a commentary on footage shot during the making of The Beast. ...

Return to Méliès: Borowczyk and Early Cinema (2015)

This six-minute short from director Daniel Bird takes a look at the silent cinema pioneers that influenced the work of Walterian Borowczyk. We take a look at various aspects to THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MISS OSBOURNE and then see the influence tha ...

Obscure Pleasures: A Portrait of Walerian Borowczyk (2013)

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 hi ...