Artur Żmijewski
Birth : 1966-05-26, Warsaw, Poland
Director
Actors interpreting the movements of psychiatric patients.
Director
Polish artist Artur Zmijewski asked a group of visually impaired people to paint the world as they see it. Some of the volunteers were congenitally disabled; others became blind in their lifetime. In the film they draw self-portraits and landscapes, occasionally asking the artist for instructions or giving verbal explanation for their decisions. Their paintings are clumsy and abstract. It is however not the resulting works but the process of making them that is at the core of the film.
Director
On 16mm film, Żmijewski filmed six men who had had a leg amputated. They look us in the eye, each from his own frame, and silently show us their disability. A six-channel installation.
Director
Presented at Documenta 14 in Athens.
Cinematography
Quiet observation of a physically handicapped woman. The initial images, reminiscent of footage shot for patient records, reveal that effortless movement isn’t always a given. Luckily a sun-drenched day makes every walk a little better.
Director
Quiet observation of a physically handicapped woman. The initial images, reminiscent of footage shot for patient records, reveal that effortless movement isn’t always a given. Luckily a sun-drenched day makes every walk a little better.
Writer
At Żmijewski and Paweł Althamer’s invitation a group of artists fills a few rooms at the Warsaw art school. All the works take the human body, that indispensable theme for any art education, as their point of departure. Past and future meet when Żmijewski's former professor joins the group. A homage to art school.
Director
At Żmijewski and Paweł Althamer’s invitation a group of artists fills a few rooms at the Warsaw art school. All the works take the human body, that indispensable theme for any art education, as their point of departure. Past and future meet when Żmijewski's former professor joins the group. A homage to art school.
Writer
Żmijewski organised a fashion and beauty show for detainees at a women's prison. Faces made up and hair sprayed, the women proudly parade past their cell doors showing off their catwalk moves. Self-expression and freedom are the main focus, not appearance.
Director
Żmijewski organised a fashion and beauty show for detainees at a women's prison. Faces made up and hair sprayed, the women proudly parade past their cell doors showing off their catwalk moves. Self-expression and freedom are the main focus, not appearance.
Director
Democracies is a multi-part work consisting of twenty short documentaries exploring moments of collective fervour in public spaces. It can be shown either on a sequence of monitors or as a large projection, and is number one in an edition of three. The subjects of the videos range from political demonstrations and military parades to memorial services and football matches. The range of events is deliberately broad, featuring the Loyalists’ Parade on the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne in Belfast, protests in the West Bank against the Israeli occupation, and the funeral of the far right Austrian politician Jörg Haider in Vienna. Each segment is presented without commentary, leaving the viewer to form his or her own impression of the unfolding events.
Director
A couple of turkish artists in Germany visit the Reichsparteitagsgelände.
Editor
Zmijewski decided to persuade a former World War II concentration camp prisoner to "renew" his prisoner number, tattooed on the man's forearm. We see Zmijewski talking to Józef Tarnawa, a 92-year-old former prisoner of the concentration camp at Auschwitz, in a tattoo parlour. Tarnawa answers questions about life in the camp. He is still hesitant, unsure whether a "restored" number will still be authentic.
Director
A group of deaf-mute students sing mass at a church in Warsaw. Accompanied by a dolorous organ they express themselves in a hitherto impossible way. The students cannot hear themselves or one another, but music is music. Particularly in God’s ears.
Editor
Frequently exhibited as part of an installation, "Berek" purportedly depicts a group of nude adults playing a game of tag in two locations: one a regular basement, another a gas chamber in a former Nazi prison camp.
Director
Frequently exhibited as part of an installation, "Berek" purportedly depicts a group of nude adults playing a game of tag in two locations: one a regular basement, another a gas chamber in a former Nazi prison camp.
Director
Two man and a woman move around naked in a neuter space.
Director
Two performers (Katarzyna Kozyra and Artur Zmijewski) observe eachother in a simple environment, moving on a big white blanket.
Director
A video work by Artur Zmijewski
Director
A video work by Artur Zmijewski
Director
People with no disability lend their healthy limbs to those who have lost an arm or a leg through amputation. Żmijewski portrays them in intimate embraces, blurring the boundaries of their separate bodies and creating a new, multi-limbed entity – and the absence of disability. - MUBI
