Lech Kowalski

Growing increasingly frustrated, the 277 auto-factory workers organize several protests and roadblocks. In a heightened effort to salvage their jobs, the workers threaten to burn down the factory. Despite the diminishing jobs, the camaraderie amongst the workers provides strength and encouragement to press forward. (stockholmfilmfestival.se)

Lech Kowalski returns to Utica (New York), where he grew up. He decides to document the struggles of his fellow citizens by offering to pay to hear their stories. (imdb)

Small farmers around the world are under stress. Their struggle is far from the scrutiny of cameras and the media. In Poland, where more than sixty percent of the total area is taken up by farming, new forces are competing for the land. What is happening in Poland is a warning to take to heart. (lechkowalski.com)

One day the people who live in a small village located in far eastern Poland near the Ukrainian border, an ecologically pristine agricultural area called the lungs of Poland discover that Chevron, the world's fourth largest energy corporation plans to build a shale gas well in their village. After doing some research they discover that maybe having a shale gas well so near the farms is not a good idea. The farmers mobilize against Chevron. (lechkowalski.com)

I deconstructed Flaherty's film. Rearranged the order and changed the context of his scenes and used the music in many different ways even rearranging the music. His film gives the narrative structure to my film. Without it I could not have made The End Of The World Begins With A Lie. The End Of The World Begins With A Lie is about history. It is about the lie's that we have been told and are continually being told in order to sell an ideology and material goods that we all want and need. (lechkowalski.com)

Puritans move on. Sex and loneliness in the life of a married man the latest borderline short by Lech Kowalski. As usual Kowalski goes straight to the point. A moment of reality in three acts, not at all just a mere provocation, quite the opposite. But behind the deliberate desire to shake accepted standards of behavior, another reality takes shape: the reality of America where the individual is overpowered by loneliness, boredom and work. Where pleasures are nothing but fantasies. (lechkowalski.com)

At the start of World War II, Maria was taken from Poland and made a slave in a Soviet work camp in North Russia. She was not alone. There were thousands of other Poles, victims of the Hitler - Stalin's pact. I remember but I wasn't yet born. "Why do you want to film me now"? I could not give her an answer. All I can say is that I need to arrive to some yet unknown place to take sweet revenge, shaking my insanity like a fist at the world, screaming and kicking that my mother and I survived! (lechkowalski.com)

Lech Kowalski's 2003 documentary feature about the life and times of Ramones bassist and all-star burnout Dee Dee Ramone (1952-2002) is a fascinating character study of a punk rock legend who never grew up. (Two Boots Pioneer Theater)

Cracow, a small group of punks make leather shoes in order to survive, but also to trample the surface of the streets in any way they deem fit. This film swifly plunges us in black and white into this little microcosm that makes its own rules while still remaining part of the system it rejects. Without any commentary, the film-maker Lech Kowalski follows the little artisanal company in its daily routine, given rhythm by the blows of hammers and the singing of anarchistic songs. (lechkowalski.com)

The film was made over years of work, with more than 400 hours of filmed material, archive footage, interviews and personal memories. It sketches a portrait of singer Johnny Thunders, a myth from the New York punk-rock scene in the 70s and 80s, who founded the New York Dolls and the Heartbreakers, and who was dedicated to a way of life literally lost between sex, drugs and rock and roll, which took his life of only 39 years in 1991. (lechkowalski.com)

Lech Kowalski asked Chico Freeman and three musicians to record live with a group of homeless people. The music was recorded on a cold January afternoon in Tompkins Square park, New York. This park was a key meeting point for hundreds of homeless people of New York City. Several days after the recording session, the park was closed for several months and redesigned for easier access by the police. This film is a record of that recording session and about a part of New York that no longer exists. (lechkowalski.com)

Combining actual interviews with recreations of events from Gringo's life. (imdb)

Documentary chronicling the rise and fall of the punk movement with rare interview footage of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. Also concert and news footage. (imdb)