 Jan Svérák: Kolja 162 KByte |
From among the Czech films made last year, as many as three have already been screened to the audiences, i.e. Jan Svérák's Kolya, a film that turns an artist's creative standstill into world success, David Ondrícek's Whisper that is faintly reminiscent of Forman's world and Dusan Hanák's historic-philosophical essay of the former Communist leadership, the Slovakian-Czech Paper-Heads, shot for five years continuously. Fortunately, at the European Film Week, one could see the two and a half hour long magic of An Ambiguous Report About the End of the World, in which Jakubisko returns to the theme of his early main work, entitled Runaways and Pilgrims, as well as the new Slovakian-Czech film directed by Martin Sulík, the director of In the Garden, portraying the inner world of a young girl brought up at a state institution who starts searching for her mother.... Even so, many may have wanted to see Jan Nemec's alchemist collage entitled Code Name: Ruby. Juraj Herz's Kafkaian grotesque, the Passage, the two new stories done by Václav Vorlícek who returned to film after a lengthy illness, or the new works of the two most renown Czech film makers of the 90s, Tomas Vorel and Zdenek Tyc. One has reason to believe, however, that just as it happened with The Inheritance or Fuckoffguysgoodbye, Chytilova's new Trap, Trap, Little Trap will never be screened to the Hungarian audience. Even films like a documentary of key importance made in the 90s, the three and a half hour long New Hyperion, - that in its importance can only be compared to Beautiful May, - has not found its way to the Hungarian audience in five years, just as the director's, Karel Vachek's new oeuvre of four hours - What Is to Be Done? will most certainly - and most regrettably - never find its way here. And Menzel's I have been His Majesty's Waiter - made of a novel by Hrabal - will by now most certainly never be created. In lack of financial sponsorship, the director gave up his idea entirely. Thanks to the endeavours of the Örökmozgó and the Tabán movie theatres, between the 8th and 16th November the friends of Czech film could finally make a virtual journey into a country that in Hungary is considered an exotic destination because of reasons of distribution. The greatest surprise of the film week, Lea, can hardly be called a Czech film, as Ivan Fila living in Germany shot it in Slovakian and German and produced it with his private financial means. This film of magic visual force tells the story of Lea, a girl who since her mother's violent death has been mute and communicated through paintings and poems. The successors of the Germans, the legion-soldier now returned home, buys Lea for their former estate and makes her his slave. Although he discloses his similarly bitter fate, he learns to love her and makes her love himself all too late, wherefore it becomes impossible to prevent her death. Although this is a modern story, it appears to take place in quite an unknown world. Behind the magic world of this internationally acclaimed film there is but a timeless story of professional tricks and banal message. In addition to the great discovery of the film, the main character who here grows from amateur actress into a star, i.e. Lenka Vlasakova, the film features Hanna Schygulla and Udo Kier. King Ubu is photographed with the same utmost care, while it is also a lot more confused, disharmonic and meaningless. The only film version of the novel has so far been a1976 German cartoon. Director of photography and film director F. A. Brabec squeezed such a wide range of tricks into the film that is only customary with animation. Yet he was unable to create an integrated style out of the multiple cases of over-editing - mixed with camera movements, - while emptiness almost literally gives a hollow sound behind the games with speed and covering-ups, just like in Father Ubu’s palace. The film's decoration, however, is excellent, and the tsar's crowns and the countless animals are especially to be remembered. The main character, Marián Labuda, proves himself a master of comedy all through the film. Mother Übü is played by the most popular Czech singer, Lucie Bílá. The film's screen-play writer, Milos Macourek, asked Vaclav Havel to rewrite the piece for the Na zábradlí theatre sometime in the 60s. The current version that has also been published in a book-form has elements of the other Ubu dramas, while at least half of the scenes are made of newly written narratives. The Ubus become very much like a Czech family, their story - if not updated, - is certainly refreshed and provided with a timeless quality. How much that deprived the oeuvre of its original identity is a question, yet the very merit of the film is in its being unusual and ambiguous - even if its impressively bizarre quality becomes affected after a while. Brabec has since then done a rural comedy, entitled The Hours Before Glory. Petr Nikolaev, known for his non-conformist documentaries, turned to contemporary Czech prose for inspiration, and that proved a more fortunate solution. He made the autobiographical novel of one of the most popular authors, Michal Wiewegh, into a film. Wonderful Years That Sucked was also published in Hungary, what is more, a radio-play of 15 parts was made of it. Another best-seller of Wiewegh's, Bringing up Girls in Bohemia was filmed almost at the same time by Petr Koliha, the director of Tender Barbarian. Nikolaev's bitter comedy of tessellated structure focuses on the sexual and literary development of the author and the father's oscillating between survival and compromise that eventually ends in madness. The retrospection that encompasses the 30 years from the birth of the author to the political transition tries to answer the question of how man can stay independent from the political events in his surroundings. It is a pity, however, that the film's nostalgic attitude rather blunts its satirical edge. The director indicates that he wished to continue the Menzelian traditions also by making unambiguous references to Closely Observed Trains (birds on Grandpa's head, ejaculatio praecox), yet he builds also on further classics of the era. The reason why he was unable even to come near the success of either these or the most important retrospection of the recent year, Thanks for Every New Morning, is that this film lacks both stylisation and a proper creation of atmosphere. An upside, however, as compared to the latter film, is its successful reflection of the passage of time through the playing of the actors, due primarily to Ondrej Vetchy's transformations beside the approximation of the action of the two boy characters. Vetchy, who in the stage performance of His Majesty's Waiter could play the main character only in the first act, here demonstrated how credibly he can play the slow disintegration of a clumsy representative of the petty-bourgeois class. In Hynek Bocan's new film entitled Boomerang ( we know the director for his Storm in the Test-Tube) it is exactly the effect-hunting and non-functional stylisation that becomes a disadvantage. The documentary-like inserts that present the characters, the symbolic names and the artistically overdimensioned flashbacks or Jirí Stivín's improvisations on Beethoven's Symphony No. 7. make this film - dedicated to the memory of 250 000 imprisoned people and depicting the forced labour camps of the 50s. , i.e. one of the most horrifying institutions of Czech history - boring, but in cases even ridiculous. Stylisation is ungrounded also because the characters are all based on once living persons. The film's boomerang is not only that preserving our humanity, defeating our craving for revenge and exercising forgiveness may turn against us, but that a stiffly didactic film made in the interest of a good goal may be more harmful than a lie that is easily detected. The film is perhaps saved by the irony that is experienced at times during this nightmare, as well as Jirí Schmitzer's , (the Francin of Beer Factory Capriccio) hard, cubist and expressive face. Its screen-play writer, Jirí Stránsky, the author of countless banned books, the president of the Czech PEN Club and the one time director's assistant of Bocan, himself spent 11 years in different prisons. It is an irony of fate this is not the first film based on his life; Otakar Fuka filmed the crime which served as the pretext for his imprisonment. Bocan made his television series Wild Land after Stránsky as well, and in parallel to this film. It was later rewritten for the movie theatres. It portrays the fate of a Czech army officer of the Sudates between 1945 and 1960. While Bocan proved unable to create a social model of universal bearing out of the prison world, the former documentarist Petr Václav does it successfully in his first film, - one of the most cultivated films of the recent past, - entitled Marian. Through the fate of the Gypsy boy brought up at a state institution, the director speaks of the problems of young people thrust to the periphery and who therefore know regular life through hearsay alone. He barely touches upon the Gypsy question. Aided by amateur actors, he shows countless fates and behaviours - often only refers to them - that of educators, children or criminals alike. The film - made up of memories, experiences, dramaturgically seemingly valueless elements and multiple flash-backs - achieves its strong impact through integrating its loose, subjective structure and a sociological objectivity. The director does more than admitting to finding the reasons for criminalisation in the impossibility of love and the self-serving injustices of institutionary discipline. He makes no attempt to demonstrate his hero's original goodness. Marian's most severe crimes are motiveless, and only their most direct reasons can be identified. The victims of both his murders are innocent people. The first is committed against the only person who loves him, his tutor, as the psychological outcome of his truly justifiable childhood revolt, while the second and deadly one is committed against a foreign person trying to help him. Misunderstanding his motifs, Marian hits him in desperation. The film is clearly harmed by the inorganic and rather didactic scenes, while its best parts call forth strong emotions by the ruthlessly close presentation of extreme situations. References made to film classics whose scenes are state-run institutions (Boys Behind Bars, The 400 Blows) reinforce the absence of originality in the film, which is yet covered up with its strong need for authenticity and honesty. This is a film that does not glorify its hero, but emphasises that Marian is one of the few who deserve a better fate and who honestly aspire to breaking out of their current environment. He commits his crimes clean at heart, and his eyes talk for themselves. The other extreme of the films that emphasise authenticity, i.e. Mnága - Happy End, seems at first sight to be a documentary of concert snap-shots and interviews, made of a Morvian music group designed and established by foreign producers, who then forced them to do commercials and ruined them. Interviews made with researchers of music, journalists and group members reveal that the popular singer could only hit three sounds back in the beginnings, that the musicians' ideal outlook was created by a computer, that the drummer has the habit of thinking up masochistic scenes while giving a concert, and the ruthless producers allow the musician nothing but apples for their meals. Parts are shown from the last part of Zdenek Troska's once successful Sun, Hay, Strawberry trilogy made with the group. After countless absurdities and impossibilities the suspicion in the audience that the group has never existed becomes stronger and stronger. It exists, everything is real, but not a word of this film is true. For the Czech viewer, who knows this group well, the film is a mystification that follows Formanian traditions, that builds on the visual structure of both Contest and Separation as well as on the juxtaposition of bizarre situations, unexpected correlations and emotional credibility. For the Hungarian viewer, however, it is more like The Real Mao - an experiment to test how much the audience can be manipulated. Its documentary force is in the fact that everything might have happened in it, whereas its weakness is only that it brought nothing new to the table. Director Petr Zelenka himself established a music group once where he sang as well as played the guitar. A few years ago he already made a similar phoney-documentary of an underground band, and even then wished to follow in the footsteps of a similar Czech film tradition (Svérák: Oil Gobblers, Svankmajer: The Castle of Otransk). His most recent film, The Button-Pinchers is a tragicomic episode film of the world's absurdity. The great discovery of the 90s is the 60 year old Jan Svankmajer who now made his breakthrough into the world of fame. His new, sex-free pornographic film, entitled Conspirators of Pleasure shows along six lines the lengthy preparations the characters take before the fulfilment of their desires. These threads, however, are eventually deeply confused and intertwined. Mr. Pivonka prepares himself for a mysterious date by making a costume of sex magazines, a rooster, clay and an umbrella. At the date, he and his female neighbour torture and eliminate each other's puppets. The post office lady stuffs her head with rounds of bread through her nose and ears. The shop- keeper, with the assistance of an ingenious device, makes love to the pretty announcer through the television, who thrusts her big toe into the mouth of carps during showtime, while her husband massages himself with equipment made of kitchen utensils, brushes, furs, condoms and nails. The sexual desire of each person is awakened by different objects. (bread, candle, pot-lid, fish, technical magazine). The film is entirely without narration because the characters have nothing to say to each other, and even their sexual fulfillments are lonely. To every character a special musical motif is rendered, which all have their dramaturgical function. In contrast to his previous, whole night adaptations, (Alice, Lesson Faust) animation is entirely repressed here until the point of fulfilment. Instead, the director concentrates on minor gestures and object motifs. The repetitions are now substituted for by a gradual approach and by retardation, as well as by playing with the similarities in the narrative structure and the possibilities of permutations. Consultants have been Count Sacher-Masoch, Le Marqui de Sade, Sigmund Freud, Max Ernst and Luis Bunuel, with the co-starring of the Pope and the Unknown Soldier. As a homage to surrealism, Svankmajer introduces Lautréamont's famous statement about the encounter between the sewing machine and the umbrella. In this film, Svankmajer overdid all his previous films in fun-poking criticism, making a society - that downtrods every sign of originality - face attempts at breaking out and at the liberating of desires. His film is - nevertheless- pessimistic in the way so typical of Svankenmajer. His atomised characters so incapable of communication, whose only treasure is their sexual originality, eventually exchange their individual rites, and for their pleasure they die. His fourth whole-night film currently under preparation entitled Otesánek tells the story of the Czech folk-tale hero who devours everything he comes across. Choosing Dimensions of Dialogue as an accompanying film was an excellent idea not only because this is what provides one with the most complete insight into the director's life-oeuvre, - especially into his extremely pessimistic view taken of human relationships, - but also because this is the single former example of permutation during his career. The film obviously deeply influenced the more recent cartoons whose subject matter was also the current incapability for communication (Word, Word, Word, Repeat). Another film by Svankmajer screened at the film week, entitled The Male Game demonstrated the techniques of repetition and the jokes of confusing reality. The other great talent of Czech animation, who was discovered at the same time with Svankmajer, i.e. Jirí Barta, was represented with the expressionistic parody of The Last Robber. The Svankmajer-Bárta line - for all its significance - exercises much too great an impact on the young generation of animation film, and like a shadow, hinders them from finding their own and individual styles. This was the case with the greatest talent of Czech animation, comparable to Svankmajer, Pavel Marek , who was rather unfavourably disadvantaged by institutional education. This was one of the conclusion drawn from Perfo 2, organised at the Tabán movie theatre and filling a great void. The majority of the test-films of the Prague Academy of Applied Arts (VSUP) were variations on a previously specified theme. A Table Laid, the series of etudes that wanted to demonstrate the eating habits of the students in a surrealistic manner, shows strong signs of the impact made by the head of department Jirí Barta, while the Home and Reflection cycles build on the other great traditions of Czech animation, i.e. the combined technique. The most ingenious piece of the latter group was The Hand, which used the drawing hand and the reposing, reflecting, but in all cases more and more independent drawing as its theme. Beside Barta, students seem to like imitating foreign classics. The Family, e.g., is a hybrid created from Rybczynski's Tango and Soup, while Gracchus is an imitation of the Fly. The student who made Movie, however, admitted to the imitation and turned it into a virtue. His film is a history of animation in a nutshell, mixed with an alloy of comedy, focusing on anti-violence. Only a single piece from the selection of the Film Academy (FAMU) was instinct with an attractive imitation of Svankmajer. It is Sexation, a film that talks about the war of sexes in a bitter tone. The most renown teacher of the department is Bretislav Pojar, now returned from Canada, who was at the peak of his professional career as early as the end of the 50s and the beginning of the 60s. The majority of the test-films made at the FAMU do not leave the realm of the conventional animation film. (one-minute films, black grotesque, clips, computer graphics). The parodies made a good job of grasping the ironic possibilities hidden in the silent inserts. Examples are the pantomime-like animation poking fun at Soviet films, entitled Mashkin killed Koshkin, or the Eastern entitled Hugo of Blood-Stained Hands. In addition to the etude entitled Shut In, in which the empty, granulous television screen reminded the film-makers of animals, Foot-Steps is the film that is based on the most original idea, recounting minor stories of the park with the help of a few handfuls of sand. The two selections screened at the Tabán movie theatre represent the entirety of today's Czech animation, as the academies have played a much larger part in Czech animation film-making in the last two years than ever before. It is to be feared, however, that the two parallel film weeks cannot substitute for a more even domestic distribution, which distribution today is wilfully ignoring Eastern-European films, or shows only their Westernised values at its best. |
 Jan Svérák: Kolja 152 KByte | |
 F.A. Brabec: King Ubu 156 KByte | |
 Petr Nikolaev: Wonderful Years that Socked 201 KByte | |
 Jirí Stransky: Boomerang 151 KByte | |
 Petr Václav: Marian 250 KByte | |
 Petr Zelenka: Happy End 166 KByte |
