ebook img

Czech new wave filmmakers in interviews PDF

222 Pages·2004·67.59 MB·English
by  BucharRobert
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview Czech new wave filmmakers in interviews

Czech New Wave Filmmakers in Interviews Czech New Wave Filmmakers in Interviews R B OBERT UCHAR foreword by Antonín J. Liehm McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATIONDATA Buchar, Robert, ¡95¡– Czech new wave filmmakers in interviews / Robert Buchar ; foreword by Antonín J. Liehm. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7864-¡720-X (softcover : 50# alkaline paper) ¡. Motion pictures—Czech Republic. 2. Motion picture producers and directors—Czech Republic—Interviews. I. Title. PN¡993.5.C89B83 2004 79¡.4302'33'0922437¡—dc22 20030¡9550 British Library cataloguing data are available ©2004 Robert Buchar. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. On the cover: (clockwise from top left)Ji†í Menzel, Stanislav Milota, Jan Nfimec (photographs by Robert Buchar), Drahomíra Vihanová (courtesy CINEART TV Prague, photograph by Vlastimil Malaska), Karel Vachek (photograph by Bob Barnes), Ivan Passer (photograph by Morton Zarco›); (background)Vfira Chytiltová (photographs by Robert Buchar). Manufactured in the United States of America McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 6¡¡, Je›erson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com Contents Foreword (Antonín J. Liehm) 1 Introduction 9 Antonín Má§a 15 Jan Nfimec 24 Sa§a Gedeon 31 Ji†í Menzel 38 Vfira Chytilová 51 Ji†í KrejVík 73 Jaroslav BouVek 87 Jaroslav Brabec 93 Jan Svfirák 99 Zuzana Zemanová 108 Alois Fi§árek 112 Otakar Vávra 115 Drahomíra Vihanová 125 Ivan Passer 144 Karel Vachek 151 Stanislav Milota 160 The Velvet Revolution and Beyond 180 Notes 187 Bibliography 211 Index 213 v Foreword ANTONÍN J. LIEHM The history of Czech film started immediately after Edison and the Lumière brothers. Czechoslovakian cinema flourished during the silent era, taking full advantage of international collaboration between Prague, Vienna, and Berlin studios. This all ended when sound film arrived and raised the language barrier, which pushed Czech cinema towards provin- cialism. But Czech film didn’t go away. Thanks to a tradition of good professional craftsmanship, we still watch many of these films from the 30s on television and buy them on video. We don’t do that just because of their historical nature or nostalgia. But some filmmakers wanted to do more than just make entertain- ment films for a small local market. They wanted to make art films that could reach the whole world. The Second World War and German occu- pation didn’t suppress this movement. On the contrary, it had the oppo- site e›ect. The occupation and subsequent cutbacks on production of Czech films surprisingly raised awareness of film as an important part of the nation’s culture. It was then that the concept of a nationalized film industry was born. The idea was that a nationalized film industry would free filmmakers from dependency on the market and the box o‡ce and move film closer to art. When the war ended in ¡945, a nationalized film industry seemed possible. The Sirenreceived a Gold Leo Award in Venice, Ji†í KrejVík made his film Conscienceand Ji†í Weiss Stolen Borders.But in ¡948, the period of brutal Stalinism interrupted this and it wasn’t until 1 2 Foreword (Antonín J. Liehm) the mid–50s that Czech film was able to make a turnaround. Many of the old dreams were fully realized in the 60s when Czechoslovak cinema became, for a short period of time, honored worldwide. The Soviet inva- sion in August ¡968 abruptly ended the “Czech film miracle,” and the period of so-called normalization that followed after ¡968 wiped out everything. The “Velvet Revolution” in ¡989 didn’t just fail to build on the best from Czech history but returned Czech cinema to the provin- cial misery of the pre–World War II era. This is a brief, schematically condensed history of Czech film you have to know before you begin to read the following text. Robert Buchar, a Czech cinematographer who for many years has taught at Chicago’s Columbia College and remembers this history very well, interviewed a number of Czech filmmakers a couple of years ago in front of his video camera. He focused his attention on the creators of the “Czech film mir- acle” of the 60s called “Czech New Wave.” (Unfortunately, Slovak filmmakers who played an important role in the movement are not included.) He added Jan Svfirák, Jr., and Sa§a Gedeon as successful rep- resentatives of the “Velvet Generation.” When Czech television refused to broadcast this extraordinary documentary, the author made it avail- able in the literary form so we all can read it. The book version has two advantages. First, it’s more complete. Every- thing that didn’t fit into the two-hour television format is here. If you see the film, you will understand how important this is. Second, the interviews in the book have a raw taste of the unpolished spoken word. It adds a drama and complexity to individual interviews, often surpassing the fas- cinating authenticity of the audio-visual recording. The consecutive lineup of individual interviews fully supplements direct confrontation created by the editing in the film. Thirteen years after the November turnover, Czechs have an Insti- tute for Contemporary History and many others. They are shooting films—mostly fictions and non-fictions made for television about the horrors of Stalinism. But until today, nothing worthy was shot about the real history of 20 years of normalization, or about how the Czechoslo- vakian society in the 60s tried to find a way out of the darkness of Stal- inism. But Czechoslovakia lived through this history, slowly but steadily recuperating from the Stalinist terror and consciously (or unconsciously) trying to follow up with better traditions of the past history. It’s not di‡cult to guess why. The 90s, like the era of Stalinism, were years of ideology: years of denouncing the past and celebrating the present and Foreword (Antonín J. Liehm) 3 the future. The more distant the past is, the more comfortably you can dig in it. The 60s and normalization were much more complicated times. In the 60s there was an energy to life, or something coming alive. It’s better not talk about this here because the younger generation, which didn’t experience it, could get an idea. In order to assess the normaliza- tion period it would be necessary to explain and document how ¡5 mil- lion people “su›ered and fought against communism” while a handful of dissidents pretty much “sabotaged” this process. To explain this would be much more complicated and much more di‡cult than to denounce the terror of Stalinism. And this is exactly the point where these filmmakers enter. They can- didly and without self-censorship describe this landscape—a landscape full of lions and many white spots on the map of recent Czech history. They openly talk about the spirit of the 60s, about the Czech New Wave film movement, about the challenges they faced, and about their hopes. The fact that none of them was a member of the Communist party makes their confession even more credible. They are aware that those they called “Bolsheviks” during normalization included at least half a million peo- ple expelled from the Communist party after September ¡968 and fired from their jobs because they opposed for years the reality of that fraud- ulent dream. But this is not about words but about the fact that they are saying out loud, on camera, what many others think but are afraid to say in public. Are they brave, courageous? I don’t believe that any of them thinks about it. They simply stayed faithful to their own beliefs, paid for it dearly during the normalization period, and are not willing to com- promise today. The question is, how long they will remain an exception? But more important are their opinions about the normalization and present times. Their candid confessions reflect the character of the time period that lasted four times longer then the Nazi occupation. During this period, the risk was much smaller than during the World War II, barely two thousand out of the fifteen million people in the nation pub- licly stood up in opposition. Historians, sociologists, philosophers and artists owe us answers to the questions these facts present. A few of those who speak here are opening Pandora’s box, letting us see images of demoralization, moral relativism and egoism that grew (and continue to grow) through the society and left scars much deeper than a decade of barbaric Stalinism. Milan Kundera once wrote that Stalinist socialism allowed us to see sides of human character we sometimes sensed but haven’t seen or refused to see. This experience deeply influenced Kun-

See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.