SOLARIS MON AMOUR

(Returning for its 13th edition, the Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look Festival  (https://movingimage.org/series/firstlook2024/) marks the emergence of strong breakout international cinema. From March 13-17, it will screen over three dozen eclectic films, both features and shorts, making their New York premieres. Check out Jonathan Marlow’s Solaris mon amour movie review. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)

You begin with a book from 1961 by Polish author Stanislaw Lem. The novel tells of an oceanic planetary intelligence which manifests “visitors”—personally-significant individuals from the past—for a quartet of scientists researching the titular planet, Solaris.

You begin with a 1962 radio-play adaptation of the book. Followed by another in 1970. Both were adapted and directed by Józef Grotowski but with a different crew and cast (with the exception of two actors who reprise their respective roles in the remake).

You begin with a film adaptation of the book in 1972 by Andrei Tarkovsky, arguably among the most celebrated of speculative-fiction films despite—or perhaps because of—its glacial pacing. Followed by another adaptation in 2002 by Steven Soderbergh (not to mention an earlier made-for-television version in 1968). You begin even earlier with another film, Hiroshima mon amour, released in 1959, the year Lem started writing Solaris. It was the first feature-length work by Alain Resnais and, like the Lem novel, nonlinearly explores the absence and loss between a couple, once together, now apart (and then together again).

You begin with a cascade of fascinating images from roughly seventy films produced at the legendary Szkoła Filmowa w Łodzi [Łódź Film School] in Poland. Films such as Man is the Measure of All Things or Life of the Stars or AP-14 Projector: Preparing the Projection, made between a thirty-year period from 1952 and 1982 (although primarily derived from black-and-white shorts produced in the 1960s). Admittedly, the Łódź Film School produced some of the finest filmmakers in the history of cinema, not least of which include Wojciech Has, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Jerzy Skolimowski and many others.

[The use of pre-existing moving-image materials in a collaged assemblage—a form of visual alchemy, repurposing a sequence of visual and audio elements into a manifestation of absolutely originality—can be astonishing in the proper hands. Within the realm of animation, the works of Janie Geiser, Lawrence Jordan, Stacey Steers, Lewis Klahr, Sylvia Schedelbauer, Kelly Sears, amongst others, persistently amaze. In their remixed use of “found” or rediscovered live-action, educational and / or industrial film materials, Mark Rappaport, Craig Baldwin, Deborah Stratman, Matthias Müller, Rick Prelinger, Peter Tscherkassky, Lori Felker, Gustav Deutsch, Johan Grimonprez, Barbara Hammer, Michael Robinson, Christoph Girardet, Christian Marclay, Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi are in an exalted realm. There are a handful of others to include on such a list. There are now a few additions.]

You end with Solaris mon amour, another film produced at Łódź (specifically their vnLab Pracownia Eseju Filmowego [Essay Film Studio]), comprised of these aforementioned earlier shorts along with the audio from the radio-play adaptations of the book and other sources. Directed by Kurba Mikurda, picture-edited by Laura Pawela, sound-edited by Marcin Lenarczyk; a trio of roles crucial to its other-worldly fascination. Marvel at the intersections between the microscopic and the telescopic! Solaris mon amour is a wonderous three-quarters-of-an-hour journey to the planet-wide consciousness of Solaris and back again.

A one-among-many worthwhile (debut in the U.S.) stop at the FIRST LOOK 2024 at the Museum of the Moving Image.

– Jonathan Marlow (@aliasMarlow)

First Look Festival; Kurba Mikurda; Solaris mon amour  movie review