Two Films by Jerzy Skolimowski

[Calvin]

On April 24th, the BFI will release Jerzy Skolimowski's Identification Marks: None and Hands Up! in a 2-disc Blu-Ray set

[swo17]

Awesome!

[beamish14]

As excited as I am by this, I do wish that Walkover could have been included. It’s basically the mirror image of Identification Marks

[swo17]

Although at least that already has a Polish Blu-ray. The big gap remains Bariera

[yoloswegmaster]

Coming in April:



Extras:

Newly recorded audio commentaries on both films by Michel Oleszczyk
Archive interview with Jerzy Skolimowski (1983)
Video essay by Polish film expert Michael Brooke
Illustrated booklet with new writing on the films by Ewa Mazierska
Other extras TBC

[charal]

BFI text on website implies HANDS UP is the 1981 (edited) version and not the original longer 1967 cut. This is a pity as is the absence of WALKOVER which was an essential part of the ‘trilogy.’

[swo17]

Has the original cut ever been readily available? The Polish DVD set also only had the later version, and that's all I've ever seen circulating on backchannels. The re-edit is a substantially new work and very engaging in that form (it's partly about the time that passed while the film was suppressed) though the original would of course be of interest as well

[foe1942]

French Malavida released "Hands Up!" on a 2-disc DVD. It includes a sepia 1981 version and the original, longer cut from 1967. I still do not comprehend why "IM:N" is not coupled with "Walkover", hmnn... Anyway, that is great news overall. "Hands Up!" is a monster, one of the strongest late 60s art-house that emerged from Europe. Hopefully, "Bariera" B-R is in the making.

[MichaelB]

Thanks for that tip-off - I had no idea that the 1967 cut had ever been commercially released, so I'll get my hands on that ASAP.

As for Walkover, the rights weren't made available to the BFI.

[foe1942]

"It's also well worth noting that when it comes to Skolimowski, "longer" probably doesn't mean "better"" Well, the original 1967 cut of "hands up!" includes for instance a FULL opening scene (Skolimowski/Leszczyc unbandaging himself / bulbs smooshing) with a longer Komeda jazzy/motorik score. And it is freaking b r e a t h t a k I n g and it is ONE OF THE BEST OPENING SCENES EVER PERIOD. The same scene in a 1981 shorter cut is much less powerful/impactful/tangible ... It would be a real travesty if the upcoming B-R is a shorter cut : |

[MichaelB]

Full specs announced:

IDENTIFICATION MARKS &
HANDS UP!
Two films by Jerzy Skolimowski

BFI 2-disc Blu-ray release on 24 April 2023

See a clip from HANDS UP! here

Presented on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK, these two early features by Jerzy Skolimowski (EO, Deep End) offer a rare insight into the cinematic origins and evolution of one of Europe’s most significant filmmakers.

Skolimowksi himself stars in his 1965 film IDENTIFICATION MARKS: NONE, charting a day in the life of a student, Andrzej Leszczyc, as he prepares for army service. But as Andrzej tries to straighten out his life before his departure, he encounters Barbara. Is she the woman he’s been waiting for?

The fourth in the series of works featuring his celluloid alter ego Andrzej, HANDS UP! finds Skolimowski once again on screen. The film was made in 1967 but banned for 14 years under Poland’s communist regime. Skolimowski later revisited HANDS UP! and added a sequence that explains why it was originally blocked by the censors.

The release of this double disc set follows that of Skolimowski’s most recent film, the Oscar-nominated EO, released on BFI Blu-ray/DVD and on BFI Player as a Subscription Exclusive on 3 April.

A BFI Southbank season dedicated to the director, OUTSIDERS AND EXILES: THE FILMS OF JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI, presented in partnership with the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival, takes place from 27 March – 29 April. It features screenings of films, including DEEP END (1970) (available on BFI Blu-ray/DVD), some of which the director will introduce himself and includes an ‘In Conversation with Jerzy Skolimowski’. In addition to EO, Skolimowski’s films DEEP END, LE DÉPART (1967) and ESSENTIAL KILLING (2010) will also be available on BFI Player from 3 April.

Special features
• Newly recorded audio commentaries on both films by critic and scholar Michał Oleszczyk (2023)
• The Boxing Ichthyologist (2023, 32 mins): writer Michael Brooke introduces us to the early Polish films of Jerzy Skolimowski in this newly commissioned video essay
• Archive interview with Jerzy Skolimowski (1983, audio only, 43 mins): the director discusses his early work in an interview recorded at the BFI’s National Film Theatre
• Stills galleries
***First pressing only*** illustrated booklet with new essays by Ewa Mazierska and David Thompson; 10 films that left their mark on Skolimowski; credits and notes on the special features

Product details
RRP: £29.99 / Cat. no. BFIB1485/ 15
Poland / 1965, 1981 / black and white, colour / 65 minutes, 80 minutes / Polish with optional English language subtitles / original aspect ratios 1.85:1, 1.66:1 // 2 x BD50: 1080p, 24fps, LPCM 2.0 mono audio (48kHz/24-bit)

[MichaelB]

It's also now been confirmed that Second Run will be releasing Walkover and Barrier in the very near future - I don't think they've set the release date in stone yet, but they'll certainly be out several months before the end of the year. Michał Oleszczyk and I are heavily involved with those releases as well - and I can't wait to hear Michał's commentaries on the BFI disc; they're his commentary debuts, but anyone who's seen even one of his video intros will know what a safe pair of hands he is with material like this.

Also, enquiries were made about the 1967 Hands Up!, but it seems that it's with a different rightsholder so it wasn't contractually possible. I'm assuming Studio Kadr (who didn't originally produce it) must have taken over the rights exclusively to the 1981 version when carrying out the restoration, and that this postdated the now ancient Malavida DVD release.

[foe1942]

That is wonderful news Michael! Hopefully, these would be separate releases.
Did you have a chance to speak with Jerzy about "Hands Up!" and "Bariera" during the ongoing Kinoteka PFF?
I assume "Hands Up!" was shot right on the spot, based on a loose screenplay with lots of improvisation involved.
"Bariera" feels like guerilla filmmaking as well, on the other hand, looks quite spectacular and that spectacle must have been, to some extent at least, conjured up prior to shooting I guess.
All in all, Jerzy's talents simply erupted around 1966/67.

[knives]

I haven’t seen it confirmed anywhere, but is this region free or at least A friendly?

[TechnicolorAcid]

I haven’t seen it confirmed anywhere, but is this region free or at least A friendly?

Region B if I remember correctly.

[jheez]

I can confirm it's region B only

[domino harvey]

Worked my way through this double feature this weekend and found myself on two disparate sides for each. I wasn't wild about the Skolimowski films I'd already seen (Deep End was okay, but I didn't much like the Shout or Moonlighting) going into the one-two punch of discovering Walkower and Bariera a few years ago, but those two films seemed to me then and even more now to exist on another plane of achievement from anything else he's done. Watching the films in this BFI set, which come before and after that pair, I think the decline in what I find interesting and of value in Skolimowski's work is clearer. Identification Marks: None has some of the visual inventiveness we see in Walkower, but it lacks that films exhaustive ambition and replaces it with a slice of life collection of eccentric specificity that calls to mind some of the highlights of a different national cinema (particularly Black Peter and Closely Watched Trains). Identification and Walkower share, however, a freewheeling and unpredictable nature that imbues both films with vivid urgency even through its ambling delivery. I liked the film a lot, but it's a dry run for the wild ambition of Walkower and Bariera. I did not care for Le depart, which finds Skolimowski unwilling or unable to reign in Jean-Pierre Leaud's hammy instincts (Leaud is of course a treasure, but he requires a director willing to tell him to knock it off, which apparently Skolimowski was either unwilling or unable to do here or in the third film in Second Run’s box) so I already had a sense of the decline that was coming, but I was deeply disappointed in Hands Up! and it's easily the worst Skolimowski film I've seen. I find it interesting that people talk about this film having a tacked on sequence added when this section is actually quite long and accounts for nearly a third of the running time-- that's no longer a prologue, that's a new first act! But the actual 1967 footage is surprisingly weaker than even this introduction, and I lost patience immediately with what appeared to be endless free associative dicking around in a train car. I was put in mind of Out 1's similar endurance tests, and that's not a compliment. So, on the whole, I'm treating this release as a Blu-ray of Identification Marks: None with Hands Up! as a bonus film that I'll never sit through again!

[Mr. Deltoid]

Just watched this set. IM:N (along with it's follow-up, Walkover) felt like a proto Slacker-era Linklater in it's doggedly anti-narrative digressions and it's determination to walk it's own crooked path. Literally. The act of walking is as important here for Skolimowski as it would be for Linklater, although the Texan rarely breaks into anything more than a trot, let alone a sprint as the Polish director does here frequently. All that ex-boxer's nervous energy has to go somewhere I imagine. He looks good on screen too, Skolimowski. Like a cross between Brando and a more handsome Dennis Hopper, he has a certain muscular presence, even if he only cast himself out of practical convenience. (The same was true of the stocky Linklater in his own first two films I guess, though to lesser charismatic effect).
Hands Up! is a trickier, more oblique prospect. I did like it, though I can't help but think I was missing some of the socio-historical nuances of that era in Poland. The imagery is very striking though. Can anyone who has seen the original '67 cut illuminate me on what exactly was left out of this re-edit? Was there extra scenes and if so, how significant were they? How many more minutes did it run compared to the footage in the '81 version (sans added prologue)?