Wars of words: Dystopia, authoritarianism, and propaganda in the sci-fi films by Piotr Szulkin

Dr. Sebastian J. Konefal from the University of Gdansk is guesting UiT. He delivers a guest lecture and leads a film seminar.

Guest lecture:

Piotr Szulkin (1950-2018) was a Polish director, mostly renowned from the dystopic tetralogy (Golem, 1979, The War of the Worlds – Next Century, 1981, Obi-Oba: The End of Civilization, 1984 and Ga-ga: Glory to the Heroes, 1985). In this presentation I give an overview of this important tetralogy with specific attention to how it critiques authoritarianism and propaganda by highlighting the dystopic realities underlying allegedly bright futures.

Already his early short films, from the beginning of 1970s, contained strong elements of a conflicted poetics of the absurd and grotesque. This uncanny narrative returned in Szulkin’s first full feature called Golem. The main protagonists of the film might be interpreted as an artificial human or a clone. The “Polish golem” tries to face reality in a distressing mixture of Kafka’s antiutopian world and post-apocalyptic vision. This grotesque place, full of signs of decay, contains some strong textual and visual references to authoritarian systems and propaganda. Apart from its obvious political message, the film can nowadays be re-read through its post- or trans-human tropes, or analyzed in terms of Foucaultian heterotopies, Beckettian poetics of ambiguity, and the Brechtian alienation effect.

Dystopian tropes also appeared in the fictional story in The War of Worlds: Next Century, loosely based on the famous H. G. Wells novel. The movie was finished in 1981 but did not appear in the Polish cinemas until 1983. Its futuristic plot starts on 28th of December 1999, which is the twelfth day of a Martian invasion on Earth. Such a narrative was perceived in Szulkin’s homeland as a prophetic vision of the dark period of Martial Law, introduced on 13th of December by the communist government. But thirty-seven years after its premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival, The War of Worlds: Next Century goes beyond such connotations and may be treated as well as a still up-to-date critique of postmodern culture, full of digital media simulacrums and fake news.

More symbolic figures might be found in Obi-oba. The End of Civilization, where postapocalyptic society lives under a gigantic dome, waiting for the Ark, which is the imaginary spaceship taking everybody to the New World. The main protagonist of the film, called Soft, is an ex-propaganda worker who wanders around the last shelter of the human race. Thanks to the great camera work of Witold Sobociński (who also worked with Roman Polanski on Frantic and Pirates) this retrofuture world looks both grotesque and mesmerising. Once again, the language of propaganda is linked here with ironical uses of English words and absurd slogans, referring to Witgenstein’s quote: ‘the limits of my language are the limits of my mind’.

In contrast to the previous films Obi-oba’s poetics is more rooted in black humour, which will explode with wild energy in the last movie of Szuklin’s tetralogy – Ga-ga: Glory to the Heroes. This most grotesque and surreal film from the director’s sci-fi series tells the story of a prisoner, called Scope (Daniel Olbryski), who is sent to the planet Australia-458 with a special mission. The absurd perspective in many scenes resembles some of the best Stanislaw Lem stories. However, the madness of Australia-458 society, addicted to audio-visual violence might be interpreted by the usage of Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death and Jean Baudrillard’s academic works.

The fall of Communism in Poland coincided with Szulkin’s farewell to the sci-fi genre. However, his interest in the texts of Bertolt Brecht, Harold Pinter, Alfred Jarry and Sławomir Mrożek, led him in the end to the last, long planned project connected with antiutopian imagination – the film adaptation of Jarry’s drama Ubu, the King, which premiered in 2003.

More info on Piotr Szulkin’s films can be found in Konefal's obituary honoring Szulkin's work that is accessible here.

Film screening:

Screening of Piotr Szulkin's film Ga-Ga: Glory to the Heroes on Thursday, August 25 from 16:15 to approx. 19:00 at the UiT cinema (TEO 6.222). Introduction by Dr. Konefal and option for q/a and discussion after the screening.

Konefal's visit is an initiative of the ENCODE research network at HSL/ISK.

Når: 24.08.22 kl 13.15–15.00
Hvor: E-0104
Sted: Tromsø
Målgruppe: alle
Ansvarlig: Holger Pötzsch
E-post: holger.potzsch@uit.no
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Vedlegg / Bilder:
CyberSzulkin 2020