Nostalgia Kinky

Radiance has released a beautiful 4K restoration of the avant-garde Polish cult-classic The Dancing Hawk as a limited edition Blu-ray. Featuring two bonus short films from its famed cinematographer Zbigniew Rybczyński, a video essay from Carmen Grey, and a booklet, this Radiance release offers English-language Polish film fans the opportunity to see an HD scan of one of the country’s most challenging films. 
The Dancing Hawk can be ordered directly from Radiance or here in the States from MVD.

A former law student and, ultimately, professor, Polish filmmaker Grzegorz Królikiewicz isn’t as well known as some of his peers who found greater international success. Still, judging his work on The Dancing Hawk alone, he was clearly a remarkably skilled and talented director, making this a most welcome release from Radiance.

Nearing 40 in 1978, Królikiewicz initially began making short films in the sixties, before gradually graduating to features by the early seventies. The Dancing Hawk is his 4th outing, appearing in the midst of his audacious adaptation of Faust (1976). Impressively, Królikiewicz continued working well until nearly his death in 2017, with his last film being 2014’s Neighborhooders. 

Based on a 1964 novel, The Dancing Hawk is an intensely experimental production, both a stylistic triumph and a difficult watch. Piotr Kletowski writes in their Radiance essay that the film attempts “to capture the essence of life in the late communist era, where the individual is relegated to a cog in their programmed social machine that strips them of all their individuality.”
Yeah, this is heavy stuff.
It also operates as an answer to Welles’ Citizen Kane…in much the same way that Pussy Galore did with The Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street in that it works as a wonderful deconstruction while being remarkably unpleasant. 

The Dancing Hawk features some of the best cinematography and inventive camerawork I’ve seen in some time. It is easy to see that this is the work of Zbigniew Rybczyński, the great artist who shot the unforgettable Angst five years after this. As much as I found The Dancing Hawk a stylistic and technical wonder, I have to admit that it all became a bit too much for me. 

The Dancing Hawk never lets up. It never allows the audience a moment to catch their breath. I admire this at times beautiful, if bleak, film, but always from a distance. I appreciate how much skill and thought went into literally every twisted moment of this film. 

Enjoyment clearly wasn’t what Królikiewicz was aiming for here with this proto-agropunk film, although there is much to love. Radiance has done its usual beautiful work here. The Dancing Hawk looks absolutely stunning on this new Blu-ray, and I appreciated the supplements.

The Bonus Shorts:

Soup (1975)

An incredibly inventive and quite astonishing ten-minute short, Soup (1975) is a wonderfully inventive work centered on routine. Directed by The Dancing Hawk’s cinematographer Zbigniew Rybczyński, Soup feels ahead of its time while harking back to some of Poland’s most influential shorts of the sixties. Imagine Jan Lenica directing an early MTV New-Wave video about a couple with little in common other than their shared habits. Impressively, Rybczyński even predicts the eighties pastel obsession via this strange and innovative little film.
Super impressive. This short is my personal favorite thing on this new Radiance release and is worth the price alone. It is that good.

Oh! I Can’t Stop! (1976)

An interesting experiment, this 1976 ten-minute short is mostly notable for predating director Zbigniew Rybczyński’s legendary work as cinematographer on Gerald Kargl’s Angst (1983). Fans of both Kargl’s serial killer classic and The Prodigy’s transgressive video for their ferocious “Smack My Bitch Up” will find much of interest here. Technically impressive, Oh! I Can’t Stop! (1976) is a good short, although I didn’t find it on the same level as Rybczyński’s The Soup.

-Jeremy Richey, April 2026-