After mentioning the Brothers Quay last week it occurred to me that I hadn’t searched around for a while to see what they might have been up to recently. They continue to be productive, and only a couple of months ago released a new 12-minute short, VadeMecum, which was produced for the Polish Book Institute. This is the Quays in their documentary mode, presenting the troubled life of Polish poet and artist Cyprian Kamil Norwid, together with extracts from his poetry and examples of his drawings. Norwid’s existence was news to me so the piece successfully achieved its goal of informing the unenlightened. Last month the brothers talked to Mikolaj Glinski at Culture.pl about their fascination with Polish art and literature.
Meanwhile, the Quays are no doubt continuing to work on their third feature film, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, in which they return to the writings of Bruno Schulz. Schulz’s story collection was adapted by Wojciech Has in 1973 as The Hourglass Sanatorium, a film I recommend most highly. The quality of the Quays version may be judged by this six-minute preview which immediately sets itself apart from the Has film with its puppets modelled on Schulz’s illustrations. I’ll be waiting impatiently for this one.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Quay Brothers archive