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    FILM & VIDEO

    Barrier

    Barrier

    Presented by Harvard Film Archive at Harvard Film Archive

    June 3, 2011

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    Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski. With Joanna Szczerbic, Jan Nowicki, Tadeusz Lomnicki
    Poland 1966, 35mm, b/w, 77 min. Polish with English subtitles

    A floating, dream-like film, Barrier embraces bizarre and surrealist-inspired imagery to tell the story of a former medical student trying to diagnosis his own gradual detachment from the world. Barrier reveals Skolimowski’s more romantic side in its depiction of love as a willfully illogical force and in its touching, vivid portrayals of the young women in the hero’s life. For Skolimowski the eponymous barrier is most clearly inter-generational – embodied in the distance between the young man and his elderly pensioner father who remains far closer to his memories of the war than to the realities of Sixties Poland. Barrier’s striking expression of the emergent new current in postwar Polish cinema and its break with more traditional narrative conventions, is made clear by its unexpected use of abrupt slap-stick to satirize corporate and military culture, as well as by the improvised feel of the dialogue and the innovative jazz score by the legendary Krzysztof Komeda.

    Preceded by: Erotique / Erotyk (1960, b/w, 35mm, 3 min.), an early film by Skolimowski made while a student at Lodz Film School.


    • At-a-
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      • Venue Info

        Harvard Film Archive

        Harvard Film Archive Cinematheque
        24 Quincy Street
        Cambridge, MA 02138

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      • Admission Info

        Tickets:

        $9 - Regular Admission
        $7 - Non-Harvard Students, Harvard Faculty and Staff, and Senior Citizens
        Regular HFA screenings are free for all Harvard students with a valid photo ID.

        Info Phone: 617.495.4700 or 496.3211

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      • Dates & Times

        Dates:
        June 3, 2011

        Times:

        9pm

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