The fine art of film

Lech Majewski keeps the creative juices flowing by moving freely between painting, writing, stage and film

Lech Majewski is a true Renaissance man.

A retrospective of his films will be screened starting Friday at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, but Majewski has also made a reputation for himself in the world of fine arts as a painter, poet, writer, composer and stage director. One of his recent pieces, the ambitious video-gallery installation "Blood of a Poet," will be shown Friday here in its unconventional filmic form, "Glass Lips."

Retrospective Films by Lech Majewski Screens: 1 and 7:30 p.m. Friday through Jan. 17 Place: Doris Duke Theatre, Honolulu Academy of Arts Tickets: $7; $6 seniors, students and military; $5 academy members Call: 532-8768 Schedule » Friday: "Glass Lips (Blood of a Poet)" (2007, Poland, with Majewski to present film) » Saturday: "The Garden of Earthly Delights" (2004, Great Britain/Italy) » Sunday: "Angelus" (2000, Poland) » Tuesday: "Wojaczek" (1999, Poland) » Wednesday: "The Roe's Room" (1997, Poland) » Jan. 17: "The Knight (Rycerz)" (1980, Poland), 1 p.m.; "Gospel According to Harry" (1992, U.S.), 7:30 p.m.

Why the change in title? "I like the sound of it," Majewski said by phone Monday from his home in Poland. "It's an oxymoron, where anything is possible. Also, since the piece is done without a single word uttered by the actors, it represents the stiffness and transparency of the emotions shown. The fragility that can break if the mouth is opened, shattering the lips."

Majewski also made the title change "to draw the line from something that was very unique and experimental."

The painterly story of a distraught young man, locked away in an asylum, who recalls a traumatized childhood involving his cruel father, was originally presented on 33 video monitors running concurrently. "Blood of a Poet" was first presented in 2006 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, then twice last year at the Berlinale and the Venice Biennale.

"People could wander around and choose the order of viewing, and assemble different stories out of their own experiences," Majewski said. Scenes, for example, showed the father putting a brown bag over his own head as punishment, playing a sexual game with a woman and punishing his son (the young man in the asylum). "All of these playing at the same time shows an overlapping cross-connection that becomes a tangled narration," he said.

"The 33 separate short pieces also reminded me of the construction of the human psyche. There are so many things running through our heads that we're not just one person, but many people with many experiences, memories, connotations and mood changes. People were very responsive to these projections."

While that rich viewing experience could not be replicated due to cost, Majewski reassembled the pieces into a film "primarily because of accessibility. In selecting, cutting and assembling the pieces into one, it reminded me of the process of writing poems in different places and moments, and then making a particular order when putting them into one book."

Majewski also adapted his novel "Metaphysics" into the film "The Garden of Earthly Delights."

Taking its name from the famous surrealistic painting by Hieronymus Bosch, this intimate film is the video diary of two lovers in Venice. A naval architect (Chris Nightingale) tries to help his girlfriend (an inspired Claudine Spiteri), an art student, make a video essay about her theories about the said painting. When she receives bad news about her failing health, she becomes obsessed with the particulars of Bosch's work, attempting to infuse her and her boyfriend's lives by re-creating the spirit of Bosch's wildly abandoned tableaus of love, lust and death.

Instead of working from a screenplay, Majewski said he had the actors read his novel and "let them in the process of creation."

"I taught them how to use the camera to capture their level of intimacy, and to say what I wrote with their own language. ... The film was an experiment on how far one can go with intimacy. You cannot get closer than being in love with another person. I was uncomfortable with the fact of having a huge crew hanging out and breathing down our necks. You end up with a false intimacy, so I wondered if could have the lovers make the film themselves from their own little pieces."

The rest of the retrospective ranges from Majewski's 1980 debut, "The Knight"; his three other Polish productions, "The Roe's Room," "Wojaczek" and "Angelus"; and his '92 U.S.-made film, "Gospel According to Harry," starring Viggo Mortensen as a tax collector trying to survive in a drought-ridden California.

"I consider myself an international artist," he said. "I have no preconception of what my next step is. I really, truly value my freedom in what I'm doing now, whether it's writing, stage directing, art or film. I enjoy the fact that I'm trying to master all these fields that support and refresh each other.

"I think the big problem nowadays is specialization, to concentrate on one single thing in particular. It's the essence of our times and I think it makes people blind. I'm a great admirer of Renaissance art and attitude, where if one is a poet, you're also required to know mathematics and music, otherwise you can't produce good poetry.

"For example, I had to take a big break from 'Garden' in 2002 in order to prepare for the staging of 'The Threepenny Opera' in Germany. It was fantastic. I had to take my mind entirely off the film and work on something else. When I came back to the film, I then saw a number of ways to improve it.

"It's like the farmer who has to change the soil every now and then, unless it becomes a wasteland."