Latest news with #Klimowski
New European
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New European
The iron curtain and the silver screen
In Warsaw during the iron curtain years, a young artist is shown into an unfussy private screening room and offered a cup of tea. Then, the latest Hollywood blockbuster begins to play for an audience of one – sometimes with subtitles included, sometimes with an official reading over the dialogue from a translated script. When the artist emerges into the light, they have only one brief: to produce a poster for the film that they have just watched, but in a style that bears no resemblance whatsoever to typical western film posters. 'We relied on visual metaphors, symbols, to produce cultural statements,' says Andrzej Klimowski, one of the art school graduates who produced work for the communist government's centralised film distributors. Ironically, given the circumstances, he says, 'There was a great deal of freedom – freedom for self-expression.' Klimowski's work forms part of a remarkable exhibition of Polish film posters currently running at London's Coal Drops Yard as part of Kinoteka, the Polish film festival. Made from the postwar period to the present day, they present unique and unsettling visions of cinema and the world forged in what literally was an alternate reality. The Polish poster for the 1979 sci-fi horror Alien , designed by Jakub Erol Andrzej Klimowskiʼs poster for Down By Law (1986) Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror The Shining as designed by Leszek Żebrowski Images: Kinoteka/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2025 Klimowski, born to Polish parents in London, chose to return to a Soviet-era Warsaw after an undergraduate degree at St Martin's, London. The lure was the art being produced there – impressionistic images that are occasionally playful, occasionally paranoid, deeply political without overtly criticising the regime. He says: 'After the second world war there was a big surge of rebuilding, and while you may have disagreed with the ideology, there was a recognition that culture would be at the heart of this. There was a certain pride in Poland's artistic past, our heritage. To produce posters for film and theatre, the ministry of culture set up a panel of experts, one of whom was Henryk Tomaszewski, who was later my tutor at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. 'His condition was that there would be no insistence on copying American posters, with a picture of the biggest star in the centre of the frame and the actors' names in size of their supposed importance. These would be statements in their own right. 'There was no commercial pressure for us, or the distributors – the cinemas and theatres were always full anyway. The work had to be approved, but largely we could do what we liked. The posters appeared on the cinemas and the streets and I saw that they would prolong the power of the film, not just promoting it but giving the audience something else to think about when it was over.' The poster for Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), designed by Waldemar Swierzy Witold Dybowski's poster for Return of the Jedi (1983), the third instalment in the original Star Wars trilogy The Polish poster for John Schlesinger's drama Midnight Cowboy (1969), by designer Waldemar Swierzy, featured in the Familiar Strangers Outdoor Polish Film Poster Exhibition at Coal Drops Yard, King's Cross, London Images: Kinoteka Similar posters were made in other eastern bloc countries, but Klimowski says, 'We did it better, and I don't say that because of national pride. After the war Poland was not as strong in material goods as, say, East Germany or Czechoslovakia but artistically and intellectually I think we set the trends that the others followed. We had the most artistic freedom and we could take more chances.' Klimowski returned to London in the late 1980s and later became head of Illustration at the Royal College of Art, continuing to design posters and book jackets. He was once praised by Harold Pinter, a man who did not offer praise readily, in glowing terms: 'He is a free man and you'll never catch him… He leads the field by a long furlong, out on his own, making his own weather.' Now 75, Klimowski is enthused by the work of younger artists in the exhibition and notes that in the digital age, reimagining posters for classic and cult films has become a cottage industry thanks to websites like Etsy. But, he says, 'It makes me feel slightly uncomfortable for the people that create them. The thrill of it for me, for us, was that our work wasn't on the wall in a private home, or a private gallery. Our gallery was the streets. We were on every corner.' Familiar Strangers is at Kiosk N1C, Lower Stable Street, King's Cross until April 2. Kinoteka, the Polish film festival, runs across London and the UK until April 29; details at Edifice , a new graphic novel by Andrzej Klimowski, is published by Self-Made Hero
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Storm could bring up to 2 feet of snow in northern Arizona, light showers in Phoenix
A powerful storm could finally bring precipitation to Arizona this week after months of dry conditions, but snow and rain totals won't be enough to offset this season's drought. Southern California is experiencing a strong "atmospheric river" Thursday and the remnants will make their way into Arizona, bringing rain and snow across the state. 'There's a large, deep atmospheric river moving through California, and we're going to see the remnants of that,' said Brian Klimowski, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service Flagstaff. Northern and western Arizona will get the brunt of the moisture, finally bringing snowfall to Flagstaff during one of its driest winters on record. The higher elevations could see up to 2 feet of snow, more than Flagstaff — with just 5.9 inches since Oct. 1 — has seen all winter. Phoenix could see some rain Friday, with a 60% chance of precipitation and less than an inch of rain possible during the day. Despite some much-needed moisture coming into the state in time for Valentine's Day, precipitation totals will not be enough to make up for months of short-term drought across Arizona. An atmospheric river is a long, narrow region of water vapor in the atmosphere, like a river in the sky. These systems gather moisture from the tropics near the equator and move it toward the poles. Once the vapor hits land, it ascends higher into the atmosphere, cooling enough to form water droplets and fall as rain or snow in higher elevations. But these systems tend to dissipate when they reach Arizona because of the topography. In this case, most of the moisture will hit California as the storm moves through, but it will funnel showers into Arizona before dying out. 'The mountains between us and the coast of California take the moisture out of the atmosphere,' Klimowski said. 'By the time that air mass gets to us, a lot of that liquid is gone.' Flagstaff is set to get more snow than it has all season this week as the system hits Arizona. Klimowski predicts lower elevations in Flagstaff will get 4 to 8 inches of snow this week, with Snowbowl and other areas in the San Francisco Peaks accumulating up to 2 feet. 'We're going to have a mix of rain and snow through midnight or so,' Klimowski said. 'Then as a cold front arrives temperatures will decrease, precipitation will increase and we'll see heavy snow later tonight through tomorrow morning." Since Oct. 1, Flagstaff has had 5.9 inches of snow, far below the 57-inch average for this time of year. 'It's been extraordinarily dry and snow-free here in Flagstaff, one of the least snowiest and one of the driest winters on record,' Klimowski added. 'This will help, but we definitely won't be catching up to our normal snowpack.' He urges caution for those traveling Friday morning during peak snowfall and to reconsider Valentine's Day plans amid wintery conditions. But the snowy weather won't last long. The weather service's extended models do not show any significant precipitation after this system moves through. The remnants of the atmospheric river will mostly hit northern and western Arizona, but Phoenix could get some rainfall from the system on Friday. Rain chances start in the morning, with the best chances from mid-morning to early afternoon. 'There's a 60 to 70% chance in areas across the metro that there will be rain falling, but don't expect much,' said Mark O'Malley, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service Phoenix. 'It's not enough to offset the drought; some people may not see anything at all.' Temperatures will be near the seasonal normal through the weekend, with temperatures in the upper 60s to low 70s as the moisture clears out. Hayleigh Evans writes about extreme weather and related topics for The Arizona Republic and Email her with story tips at This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Storm could bring 2 feet of snow to mountains, little rain in Phoenix
