FILMRETROSPECTIVE 1911 - 1941
Rudi na záletech
Rudi Fools Around
35 mm, 5:00, Stummfilm, s/w, CS 1911. Regisseure: Emil Artur Longen und Antonin
Pech. Kamera: Antonin Pech.
Rudi sportsmanem
Rudi the Sportsman
35 mm, 9:00, Stummfilm, s/w, CS 1911. Regisseure: Emil Artur Longen und Antonin
Pech. Kamera: Antonin Pech.
These two slapsticks were shot with spontaneity on location amid the
recreational facilities of contemporary Prague. Rudi is the cabaret invention
and embodiment of Emil A. Longen.
Ceske hrady a zamky
Czech Castles and Chateaux
35 mm, 9:00, Stumfilm, eingefärbt, CS 1914. Regisseur: Karel Hasler.
Kamera: Josef Brabec.
Made as a prelude to the stage production Man without an Apartrnent the
film consists of an actor's chase from a country-side castle to the
Variété stage, where the plays awaits his entrance. Hitching
rides, hijacking conveyances from speed-boats to trains, and managing a change
to a top hat and tails, the tardy thespian, in his final stretch over the
rooftops and chimneys of Prague, evokes the image of Fantomas.
Praha y zári svetel
Prague Shining in Lights
35 mm, 26:00, Stummfilm, s/w, CS 1928. Regisseur: Svatopluk Innemann.Kamera:
Vacla Vich.
This teeming, mid length document of Prague's night life at the height of the
roaring twenties is an important example of the city genre with parallels to
Ruttmann's Berlin, The Symphony of a Great City (1927) and
Vertov's Man with the Movie Camera (1929). A celebration of urbanity
powered by electrical light, this was the first Czech film to exploit the newly
developed, extremely sensitive panchromatic film stock.
Bezucelná procházka
Aimless Walk
35 mm, 10:00, Stummfi1m, s/w, CS 1930.Regisseur und Kamera: Alexander
Hackenschmied.
Hackenschmied's first film, a first- person study of a young man who sets out
for a distant Prague suburb, associates the spectator with the anonymous
protagonist by means of a subjective camera. This unconventional vision evokes
a lyrical melancholy in everyday reality while the walk becomes a metaphor for
imagination or a mental trip.
The closing sequence (in which the man splits into two persons) links
thematically to the director's later work in Meshes of the Afternoon
(1943).
Svetlo proniká tmou
The Light Penetrates the Dark
35 mm, 7:00, Stummfilm, s/w, CS 1930. Regisseure: Frantisek Pilat und Otakar
Vavra. Kamera: Frantisek Pilat.
Sculptor and designer Pesanek s kinetic sculpture projected rays of light for
eight years from the facade of the Edison Transformer Station of the Prague
Electric Company. Made before the sculpture's destruction in 1939 during the
Nazi occupation, this short abstract film - contemporary to Moholy-Nagy's
Lightplay: Black White Gray (Ein Lichtspiel: Schwarz Weiß Grau,
1930) encompasses the sculpture's Modernist theme.
Only this complex film document and still photographs survive.
Na Prazském hrade
Prague Castle
35 mm, 12:00, s/w, CS 1932. Regisseur und Kamera: Alexander Hackenschmied.
In his second film, a mobile, hand-held essay, Hackenschmied tried "to find the
relationship between architectonic form and music". Hackenschmied had studied
architecture and photography and set design before he turned to film.
Impressions of the soaring Gothic forms of St. Vitus Cathedral are framed from
both pedestrian and bird's-eye views, matched to Frantisek Bartos' musical
composition through the fluid rhythm of the editing.
Burleska
Burlesque
35 mm, 3:00, Stummfilm, s/w, CS 1932. Regisseur und Kamera: Jan Kucera.
The young journalist and film critic Kucera concocted a playful mixture of
Surrealist trick shots and newsreel material; to express his pacifist
sentiments through a spectrum of hidden poetic associations.
Zijeme v Praze
We Live in Prague
35 , 13:00, s/w, CS 1932. Regisseur: Otakar Vavra. Kamera: Jaroslav Tuzar.
On-the-street vignettes mixing social documentary with dramatic interludes fix
Prague's landmarks and denizens with acrid observations.
Woven into this poetic reportage on the beauty, banality, vulgarity and
optimism of Prague's irrepressible urbanity is a romantic encounter that
progresses from stolen kisses in the shadow of St. Vitus to a breathtaking
suicide leap from a bridge.
Atom vecnosti
The Atom of Eternity
35 mm, Original: 16 mm, 6:00, s/w, CS 1934. Regisseur und Kamera: Cenek
Zahradnicek.
The course of spring passion and its volatile consummation are telegraphed with
great style and fluency using the lexicon of avantgarde iconography.
Exagerated sexual metaphor (the trains rushes into, pulls out of and thrust
back into the tunnel) takes this "art" film into the realm of self-parody.
Ruce v Utery
Hands on Tuesday
35 mm, Original: 16 mm, 11:00, s/w, CS 1935. Regisseur und Kamera: Cenek
Zahradnicek.
Astellar cast of hands is caught in the personal acts of one day: playing,
loving, communicating,
and resting. Extremely inventive scenarios, lifted from the pages of cheap
detective novels or noticed in under-the-table, cafe flirtations, distinguish
this amateur film.
Máj
May
16 mm, 16:00, s/w, CS 1936. Regisseure: Emil Frantisek Burian und Cenek
Zahradnicek. Kamera: Cenek Zahradnicek.
This evocative short film was integrated into Burian's avantgarde stage
dramatization of Karel Hynek Macha's nineteenth-century Romantic poem.
Distorted close-ups of female body parts were enlarged almost to abstraction
and projected on a scrim to complement simultaneous action on stage.
Cernobila rapsodie
Black and White Rhapsody
35 mm., 3:00, s/w, CS 1996. Regie: Fric.
With slick, kaleidoscopic camera effects, the prolific director Fric filmed
this quick outdoor frolic involving pairs of women in duotone costumes. The
film, backed by a sophisticated swing rhythm and hovering amusingly between a
gymnastic celebration and a brilliant lingerie commercial, was in reality
promotion for Fric's daughter's dance company.
Hra bnbunek
The Play of Bubbles, auch freigegeben als Fantaisie érotique
35 mm. 2:00, Gaspar-Farbe, CS 1936. Regisseur und Kamera: Karel Dodal und Irena
Dodalova.
This animated advertisement for Saponia products features a jazzjingle, storks
making deliveries to point across Czechoslovakia, playful abstract designs and
the two-strip Gaspar-color process.
Silnice zpivá
The Highway Sings
35 mm, 4:00. s/w, CS 1937. Regisseure: Elmar Klos, Alexander Hackenschmied.
Kamera: Alexander Hackenschmied und Jan Lukas.
The youthful ingenuity and playfulness brought to advertising by the avantgarde
are evident in the low-budget special effects and photographic style of this
Bata tire commercial. It was awarded first prize at the 1937 Paris exhibition.
Myslenka hledajici svetlo
The idea Seeking Light
35 mm, 10:00, s/w, CS 1938. Regisseure: Irena Dodalova und Karel Dodal. Kamera:
Karel Dodal.
A precursor to computer-animated graphics, this imaginative abstract film
combines various
patterns of light with a message for universal brotherhood.
Divotverne oko
The Magic Eye
35 mm, 10:00, s/w, CS 1939. Regisseur: Jiri Lehovec. Kamera: Vaclav Hanus.
A crossover between Functionalism and Surrealism, Lehovec's extreme close-ups
allow his Freudian vision to unveil hidden connection between commonplace
obgects.
Reviving the appeal of Dziga Vertov s pioneer "kino-eye" manifesto, the film
seduces the viewer into a world inaccessible to the naked eye.
Rytmus
Rhythm
35 mm, 12:00, s/w, CS 1941. Regisseur: Jiri Lehovec. Kamera: Pavel Hrdlicka.
Divided into four parts, Rhythm explores, illustrates, and harmornizes
in a dynamic conclusion the oldest as well as the most contemporary methods of
visually representing musical perception.
Sequences move from a science lab with noir lighting, to a recording
studio, to the animator's table, and finally to the projection room of a movie
theatre.
All prints are from the Czechoslovak Film Archive (Ceskoslovenska
filmotéka) in Prague. The checklist entries were written by Ralph
McKay.
