Jerzy Skolimowski: The Cinema of a Nonconformist

Jerzy Skolimowski is one of the most original Polish directors and one of only a handful who has gained genuine recognition abroad. This is the first monograph, written in English, to be devoted to his cinema. It covers Skolimowski's career from his early successes in Poland, such as Identification Marks: None and Barrier, through his émigré films, Deep End, Moonlighting and The Lightship, to his return to Poland where, in 2008, he made the internationally acclaimed Four Nights with Anna.
Ewa Mazierska addresses the main features of Skolimowski's films, such as their affinity to autobiographism and surrealism, while discussing their characters, narratives, visual style, soundtracks, and the uses of literature. She draws on a wide range of cinematic and literary texts, situating Skolimowski's work within the context of Polish and world cinema, and drawing parallels between his work and that of two directors, with whom he tends to be compared, Roman Polański and Jean-Luc Godard.

'Ewa Mazierska's monograph is the first book-length study of his [Jerzy Skolimowski's] work, nearly half a century after his emergence as a one-man Polish New Wave … Mazierska eschews a chronological survey in favour of five themed essays … this approach allows her to make connections between outwardly disparate films and mount a convincing challenge to the received opinion that there are fundamental differences between his Polish and non-Polish output … this is an important, desperately overdue book.' Sight & Sound

Ewa Mazierska is Professor of Contemporary Cinema, Department of Humanities, University of Central Lancashire. Her publications include Crossing New Europe: The European Road Movie (Wallflower Press, 2006), Dreams and Diaries: The Cinema of Nanni Moretti (Wallflower Press, 2004) and From Moscow to Madrid: Postmodern Cities, European Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2003), all co-authored with Laura Rascaroli and Women in Polish Cinema (Berghahn Books, 2006), co-authored with Elżbieta Ostrowska.