Bruce Checefsky

January brings the work of Cleveland-based photographer and filmmaker Bruce Checefsky to The Box with his latest video, IN NI (Others). Based on an unmade 1958 script by Polish artist and experimental filmmaker Andrzej Pawlowski, the work continues Checefsky's recent interest in forgotten films and unmade screenplays from the rich history of the Polish avant-garde. (20:34 mins.) Andrzej Pawlowski (1925-86) was a painter, sculptor, photographer, and experimental filmmaker whose abstract work Kineformy (Cineforms) from 1957 is celebrated as one of the great films of the Polish avant-garde. Pawlowski's script for IN NI was based on the 1939-44 diary of a patient in a Krakow asylum and intended to be more figurative and representational than his previous works. The script was not realized during Pawlowski's life.

Checefsky undertook his adaptation of IN NI during a residency at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw's Ujazdowski Castle. Checefsky's previous films include Apteka (Pharmacy) (2001), based on a film originally made by Franciszka and Stefan Themerson in 1930, and A Woman and Circles (2003), based on an unproduced script, also from 1930, by the surrealist poet Jan Brzekowski. Additional support for IN NI was provided by the Ohio Arts Council.