Matej Busic as Malinowski |
AN EXCERPT: On the first day of spring in 1914, a train tore through the Australian countryside en route to Toowoomba from Brisbane. Belching smoke and swallowing shovelful after shovelful of coal, it carried the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, who was touring Australia with the British Association for the Advancement of Science Congress, and his childhood friend—the artist-playwright Witkacy, who was trying to escape the trauma of the recent suicide of his fiancée Jadwiga Janczewska. Meanwhile in Europe, World War I spread like an infection branching out from a wound. Aboard the train, Malinowski and Witkacy, both ethnically Polish but subjects of warring nations (Austria-Hungary and Russia, respectively) had a conversation that would end their friendship. At the end of the train ride, Malinowski would go on to conduct fieldwork in New Guinea, laying the groundwork for modern anthropology; and Witkacy would go on to enlist in the Russian army. Years later, Witkacy would write the catastrophe-fueled metaphysical play The Crazy Locomotive (1923) and speak to Jadwiga through séances.
These elements comprise John Gillies’ 2017 film Witkacy & Malinowski: a cinematic séance in 23 scenes. This ‘experimental docudrama’ is the sort of cinema that nurtures thought and reflection. The film carries us through a space of ever-evolving relationships, in which the boundary between the living and the dead dissolves, and the categories of rationality and mysticism blur and overlap, thereby offering a reprieve from the logic of reality. That we find ourselves in an era of aversion to nuance and idiosyncrasies makes Witkacy & Malinowski all the more compelling.
The whole Review just here - read it
Sydney Film Festival website & Tickets
Witkacy & Malinowski Part 1
Witkacy & Malinowski Part 3
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