Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz

Documentary film based on unique found footage shot in the 1920s by count August Zamoyski. A valuable insight into Polish artistic life between the world wars.

Who was Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz? Are we able to answer this question? Do we understand his strangeness, perversions and insatiability? Are we able to decipher and understand his games with identity and image? A film essay made with the use of modern technology (for example, videos recorded with a cell phone were used) creates a spiritual image of the writer as seen through the eyes of contemporary scholars of his work and interpreters of his works. The images were recorded at Witkacy's photography exhibition 'Witkacy. Psychoholism' in Krakow's Bunkier Sztuki and during the academic session 'Witkacy: near or far', held on the 70th anniversary of the writer's death at the Museum of Central Pomerania in Slupsk.

If those who knew him are to be believed, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz was always surrounded by women intrigued by this "demigod of Zakopane's Olympus." They were attracted not only by his painterly and literary fame, but also by the extraordinary beauty of the artist: tall, well-built, with beautiful gray-green eyes and very proportional features. Magdalena Samozwaniec, who knew him from childhood, recalled: "He was always and constantly in love. Just as others could not imagine life without money, he could not imagine life without love."

A film sketch for a portrait of Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz by multimedia artist Jozef Robakowski.

Reconstruction of the last days of Stanislaw Witkiewicz's life and recording of the ceremony of bringing his remains to Poland.

Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, better known as Witkacy, enivsages the future horrors of the Polish nation, as embodied by Stalin and Hitler, and the world collapsing into chaos.

The film was produced as part of the "Our Contemporaries" series.