Witkacy & Malinowski: a cinematic seance in 23 scenes (2017)

Haunted by the recent suicide of his lover, the artist and visionary playwright Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (known as Witkacy) took a train through the Australian countryside in 1914 with his friend, the rationalist anthropologist Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski. WWI had just been declared, and the pair have a heated, friendship-ending argument about the political, the personal, and the power of rationality versus the transcendent power of art. Intercut with the experimental drama unfolding on the train, are scenes from Witkacy's own avant-garde play The Crazy Locomotive, as both the speeding train and the relationship between the two friends hurtle inevitably towards disaster.