Andrzej Pawlowski, a sketch for Inni / Others

The history of avant-garde cinema in Poland began in 1930 with the films of Franciska and Stefan Themerson. Their influential film Apteka (Pharmacy – remade in 2001 by Bruce Checefsky) used a diversity of poetic devices compatible with a purely "filmic" quality that quickly became one of the main characteristics of the Polish avant-garde cinema. The Themerson’s are considered pioneers of Polish experimental filmmaking and their work is regarded as a forerunner of structuralist film. Since 1930 several other Polish filmmakers have made significant contributions to experimental cinema including Jan Lenica, Walerian Borowczyk, and ANDRZEJ PAWLOWSKI.

The first post-war decade in Poland was a discouraging period for any autonomous artistic practice including independent cinema. Its importance was lost in the turbulent political times. The end of the fifties brought a revival of experimental film with a significant breakthrough by Andrzej Pawlowski. His 1957 experimental film Kineformy (Cineforms) consisted of projecting moving abstract models onto a screen using a special image-distorting lens. Pawlowski devised a light machine with two crank-like handles to move the models and the lenses. The light, passing through the lenses, distorted the forms, resulting in a series of very complex images - wispy smoke, diaphanous curtains, passing ghosts and then suddenly solid organic forms. This light performance was then filmed.

Pawlowski gained international fame with Kineformy and inspired a new generation of filmmakers and artists. Today he is considered one of Poland’s most important 20th century artists.

Several years following the international success of Kineformy, Pawlowski wrote a film script titled Inni (Others) based on the 1939-to-1944 diary of a mentally ill person found at a psychiatric hospital in Krakow. Pawlowski completed the film script but it remained unrealized until his death in 1986.

Andrzej Pawlowski (1925-1986) was a painter, sculptor, photographer, experimental filmmaker, theoretician, and educator. He also designed industrial forms and exhibition arrangements. He was a professor and co-creator of the Industrial Forms Department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. He was co-founder of the most influential post-war Polish artists’ Krakow Group and the Association of Designers of Industrial Forms. Pawlowski was a member of the Association of Polish Visual Artists and the Association of Polish Artistic Photographers, as well as a participant of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID).