Piotr Szulkin: The Catastrophes of Logos and the Absurdities of Existence
Abstract
Piotr Szulkin was one of the most important creators of the Polish cinema of the last decade of the Polish People’s Republic, who in an intriguing way tried to create a “separate cinema” in the realities of free Poland. Unfortunately to this day, no academic monograph or anthology devoted to his work (film, TV theatre, literary stories and paintings) was published in Poland. On the other hand, popular science articles on the subject of Szulkin’s cinema focus most often on the readings of this phenomenon of Polish culture in political or historiosophical contexts or related to the poetics of dystopia. And yet, both Szulkin’s science-fiction tetralogy, as well as several of his other cinema and television productions, are items that go far beyond these perspectives. Szulkin’s films can be regarded as some very interesting examples of creative drawing from various traditions of francophone thought (including Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard), aesthetic attitudes of the poetics of absurd and grotesque (with Beckett at the top), and also from selected anthropologists and sociologists of culture (Girard or Bauman). In addition to this kind of tropes in his film studies commemoration of the recently deceased director, Konefał also tries to find narrative threads and strategies from works by Piotr Szulkin, which may seem interesting to the younger generation of viewers who do not know his work (the author relies here on the opinions of students of Gdańsk film studies and Norwegian PhD students from the University of Tromsø).
Keywords:
Piotr Szulkin, dystopia, philosophyReferences
Agamben, Giorgio. Nagość. Translated by Krzysztof Żaboklicki, Warszawa: W.A.B, 2009.
Google Scholar
Bauman, Zygmunt. Retrotopia. Jak rządzi nami przeszłość. Translated by Karolina Lebek, Warszawa: PWN, 2018.
Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles. Essays Critical and Clinical. Translated by Daniel W. Smith,
Google Scholar
Michael A. Greco, London, New York: Verso, 1998.
Google Scholar
Derrida, Jaques. O apokalipsie. Translated by Iwona Boruszkowska, Krzysztof Wojtasik, Kraków: Wydawnictwo Eperons-Ostrogi, 2018.
Google Scholar
Haraway, Dona. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003.
Google Scholar
Marecki, Piotr, Kletowski Piotr. Piotr Szulkin. Życiopis. Kraków: Korporacja ha!art, 2012.
Google Scholar
Marzec, Andrzej. Widmontologia. Teoria filozoficzna i praktyka artystyczna ponowoczesności. Warszawa: Bęc zmiana, 2015.
Google Scholar
Mikołejko, Zbigniew. Prowincje ciemności. Eseje przygodne. Warszawa: Sic!, 2018.
Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus logico-philosophicus. Translated by Bogusław Wolniewicz, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2002.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203010341
Google Scholar
Wiśniewski Snerg, Janusz. Robot. Gdańsk: słowo/obraz terytoria, 2005.
Google Scholar
Gruszecka Blaim, Ludmiła. “Dystopianising the Dystopian. Piotr Szulkin’s Tetralogy.” In Dystopia(n) Matters: On the Page, on Screen, on Stages, edited by Fatime Vieira, 202-215. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.
Google Scholar
Majmurek, Jakub. “Utopie, dystopie, ucieczki. Surrealizm i polskie kino fantastyczne.” In Dzieje grzechu. Surrealizm w kinie polskim. Edited by Kamila Wielebska, Kuba Mikurda, Warszawa, Kraków: Korporacja ha!art, 2010.
Google Scholar
Nijakowski, Lech. “Biowładza w późnej nowoczesności.” In Wiedza – władza. Edited by Jan Szymczyk, Mariusz Zemło, Arkadiusz Jabłoński, Wydawnictwo KUL, Lublin, 2009.
Google Scholar
Chaciński, Michał. “Ubu król.” Film, no 1, 2004: 92.
Google Scholar
Jamrozik, Żaneta, “Sonic Fictions: Afrofuturistic Readings of Piotr Szulkin's The War of the Worlds: Next Century (1981) and Łukasz Barczyk's Unmoved Mover (2008).” Studies in Eastern European Cinema, vol. 8, no 2, 2017: 174-192.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2017.1316814
Google Scholar
Kłopotowski, Krzysztof. “Kraj Ubu Króla.” Film, no 6, 2003: 42.
Google Scholar
Maciejewski, Łukasz. “Grównem po równo.” Kino, no 1, 2004: 50.
Google Scholar
Przylipiak Mirosław. “Egzorcyzmy nad niedojrzałością.” Kino, no 4, 1992: 6-7.
Google Scholar
Przylipiak, Mirosław. “Światy Piotra Szulkina.” Kino, no 2, 1988: 18-21.
Google Scholar
Samsonowska, Hanna. “W zwierciadle medium aevum.” Kino, no 12, 1977: 13-19.
Google Scholar
Sobolewski, Tadeusz. “Kotlet jak chorągiew”. Kino, no 11, 1993: 13.
Google Scholar
Werner, Mateusz. “Kobieta i Szulkin.” Kino, no 10, 1991: 22-23.
Google Scholar
Zarębski, Konrad. “Ziarenko piasku.” Kino, no 1, 2004: 9-12.
Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. “Inne Przestrzenie.” Translated by Agnieszka Rejniak-Majewska, Teksty Drugie, no 6, 2005. accessed December 12, 2018.
Google Scholar
https://www.academia.edu/5203815/Michel_Foucault_Inne_przestrzenie_Teksty_DrugDr_nr_6_2005. (accessed 12.2018).
Google Scholar
Loska, Krzysztof. “The Apocalyptic Imagination in the Films of Piotr Szulkin.” Maska, no 35, 2017. accessed December 12, 2018. http://www.maska.psc.uj.edu.pl/documents/40768330/43096068/Maska_35.pdf/6dcd9ce3-ff84-49c0-8bb4-340d92d565c8.
Google Scholar
Świdziński, Wojciech. “Biegun cielesności w twórczości filmowej Piotra Szulkina.” Pleograf. Kwartalnik Akademii Polskiego Filmu, no 1, 2018. accessed December 12, 2018. http://akademiapolskiegofilmu.pl/pl/historia-polskiego-filmu/pleograf/cialo/11/biegun-cielesnosci-w-tworczosci-filmowej-piotra-szulkina/629.
Google Scholar
Authors
Sebastian Jakub Konefałkwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
University of Gdańsk Poland
Dr, adiunkt pracujący w Instytucie Badań nad Kulturą Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego. Stypendysta Fundacji Systemu Rozwoju Edukacji. Autor książek: Kino Islandii. Tradycja i ponowoczesność (2016) oraz Corpus Futuri. Literackie i filmowe wizerunki postludzi (2013). Redaktor naukowy i współautor książek Strefy mroku: groza w kulturze audiowizualnej (2017), Powieści graficzne: leksykon (2015), Anatomia wyobraźni (2014) oraz współredaktor antologii tekstów Sacrum w kinie. Dekadę później (2013). Jego zainteresowania akademickie obejmują m.in. kino gatunkowe, współczesne kinematografie nordyckie, badania post-humanistyczne, komiks, telewizję i gry komputerowe.
Statistics
Abstract views: 193PDF downloads: 122
License
Copyright (c) 2018 Sebastian Jakub Konefał
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The author grants the publisher a royalty-free non-exclusive licence (CC BY 4.0) to use the article in Kwartalnik Filmowy, retains full copyright, and agrees to identify the work as first having been published in Kwartalnik Filmowy should it be published or used again (download licence agreement). The journal is published under the CC BY 4.0 licence. By submitting an article, the author agrees to make it available under this licence.
In issues from 105-106 (2019) to 119 (2022) all articles were published under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. During this period the authors granted a royalty-free non-exclusive licence (CC BY-ND 4.0) to use their article in „Kwartalnik Filmowy”, retained full copyright, and agreed to identify the work as first having been published in our journal should it be published or used again.
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Sebastian Jakub Konefał, Smartphone Stories: Author’s Strategies in the Films of Ruben Östlund , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 101-102 (2018): European Cinema of 21st Century
- Sebastian Jakub Konefał, Towards Transnational Sensitivity?: Strategies of Cultural Opening and Assimilation of Genres in Icelandic Cinema After the Year 2000 , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 80 (2012): Film at the Meeting Point of Cultures
