Beautiful Dreamers

This stylistically diverse program of biographical portraits focuses on three individuals whose unique view of the world around them is expressed through their pop-cultural preoccupations. The program opens with Ryan McKenna"s Honkytonk Ben (15mins), about a yodeling cowboy with a talent for creating extravagantly decorated pianos.
Ania Winiarska"s exquisite Dylan (27min) is a portrait of a disenfranchised young metalhead growing up in Belfast, surrounded by a hopeless landscape that is coloured by the remnants of IRA bombings.
Boro In The Box (40min) is experimental filmmaker Bertrand Mandico"s fantastical black and white bio-pic of Polish cult filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk, starring 90s indie it-girl Elina Lowensohn (of Michael Almereyda"s Another Girl Another Planet and"Nadja and Hal Hartley"s Simple Men) as Borowzyk"s horse-loving mother (posited here as the influence for Borowczyk"s 1975 cult film The Beast). It is stunning to look at, and displays both the eroticism and playfulness of Borowczyk"s own films. Borowczyk was once an important, boundary-breaking European art filmmaker often mentioned in the same breath as European auteurs like Jean Rollin, Fernando Arrabal, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Jess Franco. But time has forgotten Borowczyk (a fact that is addressed in the film), making Boro in the Box not only a lovely film that carries on a distinct visual tradition, but also an overdue reminder of one of the great talents of 70s cinema.