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“There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless.”—The Republic, Book IX 572bWhat’s the best way to describe the mania of an Andrzej Żuławski film? William Grimes, eulogizing Żuławski for The New York Times chose “emotionally savage.” J. Hoberman used “hyperkinetic,” “frenzied,” and “‘awful’ in its root sense of inspiring dread. Daniel Bird, writing about the most recent Lincoln Center screenings in New York, chose “deeply disturbing.” These descriptors make perfect sense after experiencing a Żuławski film, but I’ve never been able to sell his films to a newcomer this way. How could I? They’re much too primal for adjectives in our delicate English language, crafted to communicate Enlightenment-era ideas in a pleasing series of vibrations. The intensity of this director’s films could only be described in some sort of ancient Lovecraftian squelching,...

The Golden Leopard of Locarno Film Festival’s 68th edition went to Right Now, Wrong Then by South Korea’s Hong Sang-soo.Scroll down for full list of winners

The top award comes two years after Sang-soo picked up the Leopard for Best Direction for his previous feature, Our Sunhi.

A previous winner of Locarno’s top award from South Korea was Bae Yong-kyun for Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East? (Dalmaga dongjogeuro gan kkadalgeun) in 1989.

Right Now, Wrong Then – which is handled internaitonally by Fine Cut - also received the Best Actor Leopard for Jung Jae-Young and a Special Mention from the Ecumenical Jury.

The International Jury – which included German actor Udo Kier, Israeli filmmaker Nadiv Lapid and veteran Us director Jerry Schatzberg awarded its Special Jury Prize to Avishai Sivan for Tikkun, and the Leopard for Best Direction to the veteran Polish director Andrzej Zulawski for Cosmos, his first film...

Andrzej Żuławski does not like the title of the first retrospective of his work in the Us. Hysterical Excess: Discovering Andrzej Żuławski opens tommorrow and runs through March 20 at New York's BAMcinématek. At the top of his piece for the New York Times, J Hoberman allows the director to explain his objection and then suggests himself that the "word to best describe the Żuławski oeuvre might be 'awful' in its root sense of inspiring dread. Exuding charm and urbanity on the phone, Mr Żuławski is nonetheless an auteur to be approached with trepidation. His movies are seldom more than a step from some flaming abyss, with his actors (and audience) trembling on the edge. Typically shot with a frenzied, often subjective moving camera in saturated colors that have the over-bright feel of a chemically induced hallucination, these can be hard to watch and harder to forget."

Bam's presenting all 12 features...