Angelus

Part of our season, Lech Majewski: Landscape of Dreams

Screening: Monday 6 April, 6:30pm

Lech Majewski | Poland | 2000 | R16 offensive language, sex scenes

Twentieth-century history gets a fanciful twist in this imaginative historical fantasy that combines occultism, bawdy humour, and beautiful, ornately staged tableaux. When the first two prophecies – World War II and Communism – of a mystical cabal of painters and coal miners come true, the group must prepare for the third: a death ray from Saturn. Majewski’s vibrant imagery reflects the expressive naïve artwork of the mystics. “Wildy inventive! Fantastic imagery! A mix of Fellini’s absurdist satire and Tarkovsky’s mystical ritualism.” – Washington City Paper

The bizarre story of the “Circle of Janow,” a group of Stalinist-era Silesian coal miners, mystics, and naïve painters, forms the basis of Majewski’s most ornately staged and undeniably bizarre film, an Amarcord-like tribute to fabulists and dreamers everywhere wrapped in the harshest of histories: Poland under Hitler and Stalin.

As World War II dawns, a group of miners in Silesia while away the time through painting and spiritual contemplation; as Hitler, Stalin, and the atomic bomb enter their consciousness, however, they decide to save the world. Unfortunately their group art show destroys their chances (Communist officials have little time for portraits of green dwarves and giant vaginas, it seems), so they hit upon more original, dangerous means.

Made up of expressive, vibrantly colorful tableaux inspired by the naïve art of the miners themselves, Angelus is a visual thrill—part Fellini, part Roy Andersson—and, above all, a committed defense of mystery, poetry, and imagination against materialism and totalitarianism. — Jason Sanders, Pacific Film Archive

(103 minutes, Polish with English subtitles, 35mm)

Funding for this season of films was given by: