Borowczyk Kickstarter Campaign Update!

We just wanted to say thanks again for the huge show of support you've given towards our Walerian Borowczyk project. It's been a tremendous honour for us to work on these films, and to play a part in making them available for audiences to see again, after being unavailable for so many years. Thanks to you, we're now scheduling the new restoration work of Borowczyk masterpiece Goto, l'île d'amour to begin very soon!

We also wanted to say that although we reached our initial goal of 20K, exceeding that figure has had the extraordinary benefit of allowing us to consider the restoration of the short films Borowczyk made for Argos Films. This wasn't part of our initial plan, but your overwhelming show of support has now made doing this a real possibility.


For those unfamiliar with this part of Borowczyk's oeuvre, these films are short, provocative pieces that provide vital insights into the filmmaker's world as well as important context to his features already produced and those still to come. And as with everything Borowczyk produced, these short films are masterworks in their own right that demand to be seen.
A bit of history is necessary here. Throughout his career, Borowczyk had a special relationship with Polish born French producer Anatole Dauman and his company, Argos Films. It was Dauman who co-produced Borowczyk's first non-Polish film, Les Astronautes.

What is more, it was thanks to Dauman that Borowczyk was introduced to a range of artists associated with the Parisian 'Left Bank': filmmakers like Chris Marker and Mario Ruspoli, painters like Max Ernst and the Serbian surrealist Ljuba Popović , the writer André Pieyre de Mandiargues and his artist wife, Bona.

Chris Marker played a minor, yet crucial role in Les Astronautes, while de Mandiargues provided the commentary for Borowczyk's spectacular 'documentary' on antique pornography, Une Collection Particulière.

Dauman also produced two of Borowczyk's award winning short documentaries on artists: Escargot de Venus (concerning Bona de Mandiargues' erotic snail drawings) and L'Amour monstre de tous les temps (which follows Ljuba putting the final touches to one of his giant, baroque and sexually bizarre canvases).

Argos also produced Borowczyk's final animation, Scherzo Infernal - that puts paid to the idea that animation and erotic are two mutually exclusive components of the director's career.
What we've now decided to do is assign any funds we raise over the initial goal of 20K towards the restoration of these seminal short films. We've set an unofficial goal for ourselves of 30K to make this possible, so we're hoping in the limited time we have left (Our Kickstarter campaign ends on January 11th) that this can be achieved. The terms are still the same, as are the benefits in contributing. The good news is that what you'll receive from contributing (whether you've already pledged or still plan to) will be an even richer and more comprehensive Borowczyk collection.

Help us reach £30,000 in pledges to restore the following short films:

Les Astronautes
Une Collection Particulière
Escargot de Venus
L'amour monstre de tous les temps
Scherzo Infernal

(and subject to availability of appropriate material’s Borowczyk’s short film of La Bête)

More details about the Kickstarter campaign can be found here!