David Cronenberg in the Eyes of Film Critics

This exhibition was organized and circulated by TIFF and curated by Piers Handling and Noah Cowan. Frequently lauded as one of the world’s greatest and most influential directors, Cronenberg has earned critical praise and international recognition for his films. The cinema of David Cronenberg offers one of contemporary culture’s most unique, intriguing and powerful speculations on the idea of human evolution. Through the presentation of original artifacts, props, and sets as well as dynamic audiovisual elements, David Cronenberg: Evolution drew a parallel between Cronenberg’s own growth as a filmmaker and his ongoing examination of human evolutionary possibilities. Divided into three major chapters that follow the chronological and thematic trajectories of Cronenberg’s cinema, the exhibition traced how Cronenberg’s early fascination with the inner realms of body and mind – their drives, desires, and sometimes uncontrollable powers – develops into an exploration of the outer world that those forces help to shape. David Cronenberg: Evolution celebrated not only one of the world’s most acclaimed filmmakers but also one of our most provocative and influential contemporary thinkers.”This publication consists of eleven essays, each by a laureate of Krzysztof Mętrak Competition. (…) They focused on the most important films by Cronenberg (Shivers – his debut, Rabid, The Brood, Videodrome, The Fly, Naked Lunch, Crash and eXistenZ). In doing so, they pierced into every nook and cranny of the director’s own gloomy world, they revealed his biotechnological fascinations, they traced the ways in which his work evolved and provided a definition for his cinematic idiolect and self-referential reflexes of his films and their literary correlatives. This book is an exquisite commentary to the exhibition dedicated to Cronenberg’s work and a must-read for cinema aficionados fascinated by his films. Apart from the intriguing set of emblematic illustrations, the book includes carefully compiled biographical information about the artist and his full filmography, as well as a remarkably thorough bibliography of relevant Polish publications.” – fragment of the introduction by dr hab. Tadeusz Szczepański; ISBN 978-83-61580-19-5; volume: 136 pages; format: 245×245 mm; softcover with flaps. Edition in Polish and English. Publisher: Tumult Foundation, Toruń 2016