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My name is Walerian Borowczyk.

I am a dead Polish filmmaker.

I lived my entire life in a box with a hole.

It all began in Poland

a little before my birth.

AFORETIME

When my father met my mother,

she and her sister were playing their favourite game:

the game of Angels.

The game consisted of letting yourself die a little,

in order to catch a glimpse of angels' feet.

Or, with a bit of luck, their arses.

BESTIALITY

My father was a force of nature.

But he could rein in his bestiality

and turn it into sweet poetry.

COURTING

To seduce my mother,

my father became as one with nature.

For my mother and father

it was love at first sight.

He whispered in her ear,

"Come, butterfly, taste my flowers."

She gave herself to him unrestrainedly.

One could say that I was born of the fortuitous encounter

between a flower and a butterfly.

DISAPPOINTMENT

When my mother was pregnant,

they organised a discreet wedding.

My grandfather wept tears of joy.

My father's heart took flight in endless song.

On the wedding day,

my mother was the victim of an unfortunate fall.

She fell from her chair at the end of the meal.

I have a very clear memory of that fall.

The memory of an endless waltz with my mother.

I was born suddenly, without warning.

ENTRAPPED

Despite everything,

I was the spitting image of my father.

They had to face facts:

I was not what you would call a chubby-cheeked

and bonny baby.

Scarcely freed from my mother's womb,

I found myself entrapped in my own body.

I soon realised that I was entrapped in a body,

which itself was entrapped in a house,

itself entrapped in a country.

FUMES

I grew up in the shade of apple trees

by the railway line.

When I started walking,

my grandfather could no longer get around.

So he showed me the smoke of the trains,

and he wept.

His tears were salty with the flavour of smoky rose.

GRATUITOUS

My father would often take me with him

on his Sunday excursions.

He did not speak much.

On the journey

I would listen to the regular rubbing of his legs.

Sometimes

I would hear him piss as he walked.

"Mustn't waste time," he would say.

Above all else, my father loved bird watching.

Birds of all sizes and colours,

with or without feathers.

Soon

I too started to take great pleasure in watching birds.

HABITS

Returning from these walks,

I drew birds with no clothes on.

My mother was amazed

at my talent for drawing birds with no clothes on.

After meals,

my father often suffered headaches.

No one dared disturb him.

"The trains,

"the trains..."

he would say.

The day I consoled Olga,

I discovered all the possibilities offered by my cubic body.

I also discovered those gentle

and understanding creatures

with all manner of orifices, which we call birds.

JOY

Exploring Olga

I would lose myself.

And the more I lost myself,

the more she enjoyed it.

Then it was her I lost sight of.

She flew away

the day war came,

with its cortege of woe and noise.

After the war

I was a student.

My body had changed.

I was free.

In a country in ruins.

It was as a student

that I thought I glimpsed Olga at a bend in the road.

Her clothes were red,

as if they held all her blood.

All around her the walls wept.

My taste for literature, painting and the graphic arts

had given me wings.

But a nasty fall left me bedridden, in danger of losing my sight.

It was while lying inert in my bed

that I decided to make films.

My father gave me a rudimentary camera.

It was a revelation.

As I could not go out,

I first wanted to see the inside of things.

MORTALITY

It was death that brought me back to my parents.

When my grandfather died,

I realised how close we had been.

I wished I could taste, one last time,

his salty rose tears.

NAKED

The night of the funeral vigil,

I saw my mother fly away.

In spite of the years,

her body was in miraculously good shape.

Her lover stood in the field,

upright, erect,

taut as a bow.

My mother climbed onto the beast.

PORNOGRAPHER

Her feet balancing on her perch,

she let her lover graze.

My sense of decency made me look away.

QUARREL

To make a start in cinema,

I made use of Jan Lenica

and his contacts.

Together we put our names to my first films.

Then we quarrelled.

Today I have erased from my memory

that upstart, talentless filmmaker.

REVERENCE

It was at the same time that I met Ligia,

my muse,

my bird,

my actress...

But, out of a sense of decency,

I shall say nothing about her.

SOUVENIR

I remember the day I left Poland.

My father saw me off on the train.

Too sad,

my mother stayed at home.

For my departure,

my father had the horse slaughtered.

With the remains of the animal he made a costume.

"It'll be good for your films," he said.

I thought of my mother, weeping alone in the house.

In order to save money,

I travelled in a goods carriage.

On the train to Paris

I met the person who would become my assistant.

I have a fuzzy memory of my first homosexual experience.

TAKE

In Paris, without money,

I shot my first films, one image at a time.

They were a success,

and I was given more film to work with.

I shot longer and longer films,

directing actors with and without costumes.

I built the sets with my own hands, leaving nothing to chance.

I wanted to attain grace.

All the films I shot form but one film.

UNANIMOUS

At first the critics were unanimously positive.

Then it turned into a continuous stream of piss.

They held against me

my pornography, my systematisation,

my Polish accent, my pretentiousness,

my temper, my obsessions,

my bad taste,

my mannerism and my gratuitous violence.

Some of my films were called vulgar.

I don't see why.

VULGARITY

In France,

I became a specialist of 'featherweight films',

using a skeleton crew to make increasingly spare erotic films.

I made a name for myself,

which was forgotten.

My cinema caught a disease.

No one wanted to see it any more.

YEARNING

Despite everything, I remained true to my inspiration.

Without knowing where it would lead me.

ZEPHYR

When I returned to Poland, it was by car.

It was the last time I saw my parents.

It was night.

We blew on the embers, talking about the past.

A warm wind filled our hearts.

My parents never saw my French films.

That was Walerian Borowczyk.

Subtitling by TITRA FILM Paris