The Mill and the Cross, Lech Majewski (Poland/Sweden, 2010)

(Mlyn i krzyz). In his wonderfully creative cinematic interpretation of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s masterpiece The Way to Calvary, director Lech Majewski (PFA filmmaker in residence in 2007) utilizes film and computer technologies to create a multilayered world of sixteenth-century Flanders under the brutal Spanish occupation. A dramatization of characters drawn from the painting, featuring Rutger Hauer as Bruegel, Michael York as his patron, and Charlotte Rampling as the Virgin Mary. Majewski goes “inside a masterpiece, and creat(es) a new one in The Mill and the Cross—an extraordinary example of both art-historical examination and CGI as a passport to unknown lands” (Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice).

• Written by Majewski, Michael Francis Gibson, based on a book by Gibson. Photographed by Majewski, Adam Sikora. With Rutger Hauer, Michael York, Charlotte Rampling, Joanna Litwin. (92 mins, In English and Flemish with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, PFA Collection, permission Kino Lorber)