000 Forum – Czech film/Interview 002 Jaromír Blažejovský: The smiles of sad Czechs 002 — Looking back at the motion pictures of the past season 010 Pavel Horáček: Czech animation: waiting in the mezzanine 010 014 Sylva Poláková: Where does a film experiment begin and end? 014 018 Martin Svoboda: You must not take it so seriously 018 — Interview with Karel Vachek 2019 � SPECIAL ENGLISH ISSUE � FOR FREE 028 Martin Svoboda: So that the viewers don’t feel deceived 028 — Interview with Bohdan Karásek 000 Films 036 Karel Vachek: Communism and the Net or the End 035 of Representative Democracy (Janis Prášil) 038 Václav Marhoul: The Painted Bird (Martin Svoboda) 037 042 Bohdan Karásek: Karel, me and you (Martin Šrajer) 041 044 Johana Ožvold: The Sound Is Innocent (Štěpánka Ištvánková) 043 046 Michal Hogenauer: A Certain Kind of Silence (Marek Koutesh) 045 048 Martin Dušek, Ondřej Provazník: Old-Timers (Jan Jaroš) 047 050 Martin Mareček: Over the Hills (Martin Šrajer) 049 052 Jiří Havelka: Owners (Zdena Mejzlíková) 051 000 Books 056 A milestone of Czech writing about films(Zdena Škapová) 054 001 Editorial 000 Forum – Czech film/Interview 002 Jaromír Blažejovský: The smiles of sad Czechs 002 — Looking back at the motion pictures of the past season 010 Pavel Horáček: Czech animation: waiting in the mezzanine 010 014 Sylva Poláková: Where does a film experiment begin and end? 014 018 Martin Svoboda: You must not take it so seriously 018 — Interview with Karel Vachek 028 Martin Svoboda: So that the viewers don’t feel deceived 028 — Interview with Bohdan Karásek 000 Films 035 Karel Vachek: Communism and the Net or the End 035 of Representative Democracy (Janis Prášil) 037 Václav Marhoul: The Painted Bird (Martin Svoboda) 037 041 Bohdan Karásek: Karel, me and you (Martin Šrajer) 041 043 Johana Ožvold: The Sound Is Innocent (Štěpánka Ištvánková) 043 045 Michal Hogenauer: A Certain Kind of Silence (Marek Koutesh) 045 047 Martin Dušek, Ondřej Provazník: Old-Timers (Jan Jaroš) 047 049 Martin Mareček: Over the Hills (Martin Šrajer) 049 051 Jiří Havelka: Owners (Zdena Mejzlíková) 051 000 Books 054 A milestone of Czech writing about films (Zdena Škapová) 054 fILM A DobA Proofing Critical quarterly journal dedicated to film and the times since 1955, Hana Ucekajová Special English Issue Production Published by Spolek přátel Filmu a doby, z. s. with financial support of the Min- Vydavatelství Filozofické fakulty Univerzity Palackého v Olomouci istry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the State Cinematography Fund fILM A DobA Branická 620/124, Braník, 147 00 Praha 4 Editor-in-chief e-mail: [email protected] Eva Zaoralová �.filmadoba.eu � filmadoba Executive editor Michal Kříž Free of charge Writers Place of Issue Date of Publication Jan Křipač, Martin Šrajer Prague, Czech Republic June 28, 2019 Editorial board Cover photo Michal Bregant, Jan Bernard, Petr Gajdošík, Saša Gedeon, Pavel Horáček, A Certain Kind of Silence (Michal Hogenauer, 2019) Milan Klepikov, Karel Och, Alena Prokopová, Jan Svoboda, Zdena Škapová ISSN: 0015-1068 Graphic design and layout Registered with the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Lukáš Kijonka a Michal Krůl � Kolektiv Studio Republic under No. E 1569 Translation Hana Bohatová, Jekatěrina Křipačová, Kateřina Matrasová, Marie Přibylová, Milan Růžička, Tereza Siegelová, Pavla Voltrová Language editing David Livingstone 001 Forum – Czech Films/Interviews The smiles of sad Czechs ��� Looking back at the motion pictures of the past season Jaromír Blažejovský At the end of 2018, something unprecedented was doba. Only one of them earned distribution results (100,000 happening: Czech cinemas were cancelling the screenings viewers) worth mentioning: Tomáš Pavlíček’s Bear with Us of Czech comedies to satisfy the hunger of all generations (Chata na prodej, 2018), a metaphor of the closed nature of for the Queen. And all this in spite of the critics trying their Czechs who feel comfortable in their woods, although even best to explain to the public that Bohemian Rhapsody (dir. by there they can make each other’s lives miserable. Two debuts Bryan Singer, 2018) was really nothing special! In contrast, received at least the attention of critics: Beata Parkanová’s they supported the film Winter Flies (Všechno bude, 2018) Moments (Chvilky, 2018) showed Jenovéfa Boková in the trying to talk the audiences into believing that this time Olmo role of a young woman who wants to please everyone but Omerzu had made an easy to watch film. But it was a wast- can’t develop or assert her own self. Adam Sedlák’s Domes- ed effort: in no calendar week, the teenager road movie was tique (Domestik, 2018) attracted with its physicality and ex- among the Top 20. It didn’t help that it was included in the travagant form. Academy Award competition section, or that it was praised by female reviewers who had been yawning with boredom at Havířov, alcohol, Most! Václav Kadrnka’s allegedly non-communicative Little Crusad- In 2018, 16,344,483 viewers came to cinemas, which is er (Křižáček, 2017) the year before;01 the distribution results the most since 1994 when the commercial TV station Nova of the winner of the Crystal Globe at the Karlovy Vary Inter- started broadcasting, and twice as much as in the weakest national Film Festival Little Crusader and of the winner of the year 1999. However, the most impressive audiovisual works Best Director Award at the same festival Winter Flies were of last year were made for the Czech Television, and not for comparably mediocre. cinemas: two two-part dramas based on devastating events Artistically ambitious films are scarce in the contempo- in the Karviná region. rary Czech production and their importance is minor: they al- It has been 57 years since the fire in the Dukla coal mine most can’t be seen at cinemas, they don’t reach international in the Havířov region, where 108 miners died on 07 July 1961, festivals, they don’t have a say in public discussion. Basical- which is a similar period to the one that elapsed between the ly all domestic arthouse films were presented in last year’s Kladno miner strike in 1889 and its depiction in The Strike competition sections at the Karlovy Vary International Film (Siréna, 1947), as made by Karel Steklý using the socialist Festival and we have already written about them in Film a realism method. Just like The Strike sounded like an indict- ment of capitalism, Dukla 61 (dir. by David Ondříček, 2018) could easily have become a common-place anti-communist film. However, the authors approached the matter in a more 01 Cf. Mirka Spáčilová, Trucovitě nedivácký. Křižáček je křížovka, complex way and offered a cultural and anthropological re- co ztratila legendu, 1. 8. 2017, see https://www.idnes.cz/kultu- construction of the life of miners of the time, based on ex- ra/film-televize/krizacek-recenze.A170731_100836_filmvideo_ts, tensive research. cit. 10/02/2019; Mirka Spáčilová, Páni kluci stále věří, že všech- The Czech Television accompanied this fiction drama no bude. Dost možná film roku, 2. 9. 2018, see https://www.idnes. cz/kultura/film-televize/recenze-vsechno-bude-olmo-omerzu. with a documentary by Bára Kopecká and Jakub Režný The A180831_112836_filmvideo_spm, cit. 10. 2. 2019. Black Gold (Černé zlato), also in two parts. Watching this 002 Forum – Czech Films/Interviews ↳ Úsměvy smutných mužů documentary, we can see that the screenwriters Jakub Režný 1996), Loners (Samotáři, 2000), Grand Hotel (Grandhotel, and Matěj Podzimek transformed the empirical findings into 2006) which the director David Ondříček was famous for. In fiction in a graphic way: where the documentary mentions his turn-around to the working class, he made a masterpiece the alcoholism of miners and their dissatisfied wives, the which can be compared to the remarkable Silesian trilogy by film portrays such a family in the neighbourhood. The doc- Kazimierz Kutz; mainly to its second part Pearl in the Crown umentary talks about high earnings and in the 42nd minute (Perła w koronie, 1971). Also Martha Issová and Marek Ta- of the second part of Dukla 61, there is a scene where a clík and the debuting Antonie Formanová playing Jana whose miner drops his elegantly dressed partner with a new fridge, parents had died in the Holocaust, did their top acting job in and then makes a U-turn and helps the wives of other miners Dukla 61. Even though the story takes place under socialism, reach the disaster site. The authors paid significant attention it resonates even now lively and painfully. Seven months af- to the dialogues in the Silesian dialect with traces of Pol- ter the TV première, methane exploded at the ČSM mine in ish, Slovak, and Hungarian. For those interested in facts, the Stonava; and both the Czech Republic and Poland, the coun- Czech Television made an interactive website. try most of the 13 victims came from, were overwhelmed Little attention has been paid to the working class in with grief. the Czech production after November 1989; a solitary at- Methanol (Metanol), directed by Tereza Kopáčová tempt was Martin Šulík’s Working Class Heroes (Sluneční based on a screenplay by Lenka Szántó and Matěj Podzimek, stát, 2005) and Jan Prušinovský’s The Snake Brothers (Kob- examines the wave of people turning blind and dying, which ry a užovky, 2015) ten years later. The typical heroes of the affected Silesia and Moravia and killed more than 50 people. Czech film after 1989 are nouveau riches, weaklings, and Just like Dukla 61, Methanol has two parts as well with the idlers. It is this kind of funny films such asWhisper (Šeptej, second part having a different tone than the first one: the ↱ 2× Dukla 61 003 Forum – Czech Films/Interviews ↳ Most! first part of Dukla 61 is a family drama, while the second one culture war.