Incantatio – old school Butoh

Tomek Wysokinski’s art documentary Incantatio on Polish Butoh dancer Pawel Dudzinski will be my first reviewing from Zagreb Film Festival 2010 edition.

Still from Incantation by Tomek Wysokinski

66 years Pawel Dudzinski is a successor of the old school Butoh founders Hijikata Tatsumi and Kazuo Ohno, there is no doubt. Butoh that characterizes intransient embodiment, empty mind and nakedness in totality.

Still from Incantation by Tomek Wysokinski

The film of 14 minutes length follows Dudzinski’s working processes completely in a manner of Butoh aesthetics and Eastern philosophy.

What had really strong and appealing impact on me as a viewer was the fact that the film director is following the line of this abstract story according to the inner spaces and corners of the artist, but naturally not leaving documentary procédé.

Still from Incantation by Tomek Wysokinski

Wysokinski documents his object with such a respect, making this film to look like a small diary through different shooting techniques and within a wider scale of photographic erudity. But that’s how it goes with Butoh, you can’t escape it, Chiaroscuro elements as default propositions for narration, as far as the abstraction lays.

Still from Incantation by Tomek Wysokinski

The correlation between the body and the nature is strongly marked and practically the basis of this poetic documentary.

About director:
Tomek Wysokinski is a traveler and filmmaker. Always traveled outside the trails for over fifty countries outside Europe. Inspired by human relations and art. Explorer of different cultures and civilizations. Multi tasking as a director, writer and sometimes cameraman. Now working on ‘The Last Prophet’, his feature-length documentary debut. (bio taken from zagrebfilmfestival)