Walerian Borowczyk

Walerian Borowczyk (1923-2006) was a Polish film director famously described by critics as a “genius who also happened to be a pornographer”. He directed 40 films between 1946 and 1988. Born near Poznań, Borowczyk studied painting in Kraków and began his career as a graphic artist and lithographer, notably working with Jan Lenica on film posters. He and Lenica soon moved into surreal animated shorts, such as Time Upon a Once (1957) and House (1958). In 1959, he moved to Paris, where he would work for most of the remainder of his career. After experimenting with further animated shorts, he moved into live-action feature films with Goto, l’île d’amour (1968) and Blanche (1971), both starring his wife, Ligia Branice. Borowczyk became renowned for his surreal and controversially erotic films, which would include the fifth installment in the Emmanuelle hard-core series. Among his most celebrated features are A Story of Sin and The Beast (both 1975).