East of Paradise Série-Collection : Un fabuleux art de la survie

Lech Kowalski
2005 - 105 min - DV Cam - Couleur et Noir & Blanc - France

For the third and the last part of his Polish trilogy "A fabulous survival art" which was started with "Boot Factory" (2000) and "On Hitler's Highway" (2003), Lech Kowalski questions his own biography.
Through some large movie clips and some unexploited rushes of his movies from the American period ("Gringo", "DOA"...) and some recent movie pictures, the film director gives an interview and comes back on his path, from his beginnings in the pornographic industry to his involvement in the New York underground during the seventies and the eighties.
But first, he offers us a rare gem : an intimate portrait of his Polish mother where she tells, between distant smiles and insurmountable tears, how she was sent to Gulag and condemned to wandering by the Soviet troops at the beginning of the Second World War... with on the way, hunger, cold, headlouses but also some unexpected solidarities..