Directing

Paweł Wojtasik

Born

1952-01-01 (74)

Place of birth

Łódź, Poland

Known for

Directing

Credits

10 titles

Paweł Wojtasik was born in Łódź, Poland, and lived in Tunisia before coming to the United States as a refugee in 1972. He received an MFA from Yale University in 1996. From 1998 until 2000 he was a resident at Dai Bosatsu Zendo Buddhist monastery in the Catskill mountains of New York State. Wojtasik’s internationally recognized films and video installations are visionary and poetic reflections on our environment and culture. Wojtasik’s film The Aquarium (2006) deals with the destruction of the oceans; while the 360° panoramic video installation Below Sea Level (2009-2011), with soundscape by Stephen Vitiello, concerns the plight of post-Katrina New Orleans. Below Sea Level was commissioned …

Known for

The Given poster
NR

An actress living in New York performs an audition, then goes to meditation and winds up at a party of artists viewing a film. At home, she and her girlfriend explore buried memories and later nightmares trigger sleepwalking. Finally, the actress enacts a childlike performance inspired by a Frank Wedekind play.

The Given

2015

Single Stream poster
5.5

Single Stream explores a recycling facility in the Boston area, where hundreds of tons of refuse are sorted daily. Blurring the line between observation and abstraction, Single Stream plunges the viewer into the steady flow of the plant and the waste it treats, examining the material consequences of our society's culture of excess.

Single Stream

2014

Every Pulse of the Heart Is Work poster
5.0

From a snake charmer to a welder, from a weaver to an obstetrician, the inhabitants of the holy city of Varanasi are striving for survival, and transform and ennoble themselves in the process. A hypnotic study of people at work—a street beggar, a surgeon, a weaver, a priest, a masseur, a tabla drum maker, and a crane operator: people who in their intense concentration and ritualized movements evoke the idea of human labor as an act of spiritual devotion and social interdependence. Filmed largely in India’s ancient holy city of Varanasi

Every Pulse of the Heart Is Work

2019

The Aquarium poster
NR

Filmed primarily in Alaska, The Aquarium contrasts the openness of the primeval Arctic landscape with the entrapment of captured sea mammals in aquariums. It speaks of the progressive destruction of these animals’ habitat, seeing beyond the alluring spectacle.

The Aquarium

2006

Empty Metal poster
4.3

Adam Khalil and Bayley Sweitzer’s first feature as co-directors, Empty Metal takes place in a world similar to ours—one of mass surveillance, pervasive policing, and increasing individual apathy. The lives of several people, each inhabiting extreme poles of American social and political consciousness, weave together as each attempts to achieve some kind of forward motion, sometimes in contradiction, and always under the eye of far more controlling powers.

Empty Metal

2018

No artwork available
NR

Nascentes Morimur consists of silent footage of an actual autopsy.

Nascentes Morimur

—

Film credits

Behind the camera

Single Stream poster
5.5

Single Stream explores a recycling facility in the Boston area, where hundreds of tons of refuse are sorted daily. Blurring the line between observation and abstraction, Single Stream plunges the viewer into the steady flow of the plant and the waste it treats, examining the material consequences of our society's culture of excess.

Single Stream

2014

Every Pulse of the Heart Is Work poster
5.0

From a snake charmer to a welder, from a weaver to an obstetrician, the inhabitants of the holy city of Varanasi are striving for survival, and transform and ennoble themselves in the process. A hypnotic study of people at work—a street beggar, a surgeon, a weaver, a priest, a masseur, a tabla drum maker, and a crane operator: people who in their intense concentration and ritualized movements evoke the idea of human labor as an act of spiritual devotion and social interdependence. Filmed largely in India’s ancient holy city of Varanasi

Every Pulse of the Heart Is Work

2019

The Aquarium poster
NR

Filmed primarily in Alaska, The Aquarium contrasts the openness of the primeval Arctic landscape with the entrapment of captured sea mammals in aquariums. It speaks of the progressive destruction of these animals’ habitat, seeing beyond the alluring spectacle.

The Aquarium

2006

No artwork available
NR

Nascentes Morimur consists of silent footage of an actual autopsy.

Nascentes Morimur

—

Pigs poster
NR

A close-range look at pigs living on a farm in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Pigs

2010

End of Life poster
NR

End of Life is the product of four years spent by John Bruce and Paweł Wojtasik with five individuals at various stages in the process of dying. The filmmakers trained to be end-of-life doulas and documented hundreds of hours of interactions with their subjects.

End of Life

2017

No artwork available
NR

Naked shows a colony of naked mole rats living in a laboratory at a major American University.

Naked

—

No artwork available
NR

A meditative exploration of a sewage treatment plant.

Dark Sun Squeeze

2003