První veřejnoprávní Čestmír Kopecký
in co-production with Slovak Film Institute, Cinemart and UPP
presents
25 from the Sixties, or the Czechoslovak New Wave
A documentary film Part II
Script
Sound
Editing
Directors of Photography
Production Manager
Produced by
Directed by
In the mid-sixties the New Wave briskly pours over to Slovakia.
Despite the previous generation of older FAMU graduates
like Uher, Barabas, Solan, Holy,
there come their followers Havetta, Hanak, Jakubisko.
We could also mention Ivan Balada and Juraj Herz
but they were Slovaks who stayed in Czech
and in Slovakia they made several TV films,
like Balada's Lady, or Herz's Sweet Games of the Last Summer.
Perhaps the most vigorous entry among Slovakian filmmakers
came with Juraj Jakubisko and his film Crucial Years.
Turn to me. Boom!
A game. Life is a battlefield.
The idea is not mine, it was written by Jarda Ucen
and Koliba production gave it a thumb up.
The original title was Runway.
It was a story of two brothers, a painter and a pilot,
the pilot died during the Cuban missile crisis and the silly painter
who had painted nothing but abstract pictures, realized
that his art must serve socialism and peace.
Dohnal read it and said: Man, what is the film about?
I said: How can you not know? See, this here is the beginning
As a boy I came to a beehive and we played with toy guns,
and then I lived with this girl who worked in an asylum
and we'd fool around with a stuffed arm
So I kept telling him stuff about every single scene
and as I finished, he said:
Alright, let's write down all these things you've told me.
And that's how Crucial Years came to existence.
It was an autobiography because Jana was my girlfriend back then
and we'd gone through many things together.
She was an artist and had a gorgeous long neck.
Once I was in a production room
and there came Vlado Müller who had just acted in The Hangman.
He says: I've just finished post dubbing, got a job for me?
The production manager said:
This young director is about to make a new film, read it.
And Müller called the next day saying: I'm in.
Then we had to cast the other character and wanted Abrham.
We rehearsed with him, he even brought some girls to act there
but right before shooting he came and said:
Juraj, I can't do this. I was asked to act in Spring Waters
and it's a unique opportunity. It may be the role of my life.
So there came Jirka Sykora,
totally different from what I'd had in mind; no hunk, see?
Unlike the handsome Abrham but then I thought why not?
If you manage to make people like this chubby guy, good on you,
you're a director, right? It might be a good film then.
I thought it lacked an explosion of light
and back then I didn't consider tones and shades.
So, as we were shooting from a tower next to a church
sharply lit by the sun from behind it created a huge light contrast
and later during some screening Juraj says: Where is the tower?
All we could see was some ghost
but it looked much better than some realistic image.
Hey, Jana
You like me. You're crazy about me, aren't you?
These visual jokes come out of a natural, full-bodied image.
The 16mm film copied from another 16mm film resulted
in an image of a convincing verity sunk in a grainy picture.
Crucial Years were labeled the worst camera work in Koliba
however I knew this would not only help me move forward
but I also knew this was me.
I'm also hard to see through.
Helge belongs to the generation
affected by a conference in Banska Bystrica.
His School for Fathers gained some official acclaim
but in Great Solitude he was forced to change its ending.
This concession affected all his following film works
and it was as late as in 1967 with his film Shame
when he returned to the original moral ground of School for Fathers.
Shame is a story of a corrupted communist
and this topic preceded what the whole 1968 year was about,
about searching for a moral responsibility for the 50's and on.
What's going on?
Comrade chairman, sorry but this is an order.
- What order? - An order to bring Mr Kvasica to the hearing
Did you hear it? What Mr? He's just as much a comrade as you are.
- Sorry, comrade chairman. - So what's going on?
Here's an order from the prosecutor.
We started to prepare Shame when I was a member of FITES
and things went pretty smoothly.
I can't remember any major obstacles concerning the screenplay.
It was quickly approved, quickly shot but the story came too late.
If it had been presented in 1967
I wouldn't have wished to be in shoes of the responsible director.
A rape. I've got a daughter myself. That man deserves to...
But if you just knew how hard he can work.
The worst agricultural cooperative around and all of a sudden...
Go take a look at what he's managed to conjure up.
The only obstacle came from the county council in Mikulov.
They asked for a screenplay which had never happened before.
Although I had made two films there they recommended me
to shoot this film somewhere else
because the story puts Mikulov to shame and we should be careful
because the symbolism of the Mikulov castle resembles the Prague Castle.
So I went to see them and eventually we came to an agreement.
This here is my old friend, we worked at the same workbench.
- He's got troubles getting a flat. - But we don't allot flats.
I know but how about a public interest?
There are strict rules concerning a recognition of a public interest.
- You think this comrade... Hromek. - Comrade Hromek might fit in?
What is this jack-in-office thing? There are rules and there is a man.
A director is responsible for everything,
he cannot make any excuses because he can change circumstances.
And I support a concept of a political film.
This is why I was attacked by Vaclav Havel once...
There was this magazine Kveten
and once I discussed film there with Vojtech Jasny,
arguing about a form and a content.
Jasny supported a form, I supported a content
When Vaclav Havel justly stepped in with a disputative article claiming
that my dull opinions don't deserve discussions but I can't help myself.
I think that film as an art must be a part of the society I live in.
- How old are you? - 14. Didn't they tell you?
I'm here to help you if you wish. Are you feeling any pain?
Speak, you dummy, when this gentleman is talking to you.
No, I don't feel any pain.
Have you taken her to a doctor?
Come on, doctors and police, we never get anywhere else.
If you'd kept quiet, you stupid cow there'd be no fuss.
I think Helge himself considered Shame a part of a loose trilogy
School for Fathers, Great Solitude and Shame where even cast repeats.
The interesting thing is that Helge liked to cast Slovak actors,
probably due to their expressive acting
but at the same time he never casted non-actors for roles of countrymen.
He always relied on traditional directing methods and acting.
So, did you see it?
What the hell was that? A baby. Who messed this up?
Ask this engineer who reported.
- Just tell him. - I know it was lame.
But if it weren't for this girl justice would sleep on.
You didn't want to hear about any of the filth here.
Eventually the film was critically acclaimed, mainly abroad.
I simply like that film because it brought me back to my roots.
Its intention is honest and the film itself is pretty good.
I gained a lot more self-esteem
and as a director I felt much better.
That's why it felt so bad when it cut me off my next filmmaking.
Hey you!
Show up!
Why are you so quiet?
I know you all.
You wanna get rid of me? You wish.
To get rid of me?
This is me. Me!
May I offer you a lift, Madam?
- Why don't you take us. - I don't have a licence.
No way, it's illicit.
Jiri Krejcik as well as other older directors did not go the easy way.
In the 40's he made his first excellent films
like A Week in the Quiet House, or Conscience.
During the 50's his works sometimes lost its quality,
like Frona, but in the late 50's he is back on a track
with Higher Principle, a film which belongs to our treasures.
From the mid-sixties he joined the New Wave and made films like
Boarding House for Single Gentlemen a A Hard and Fast Marriage.
I want you to answer this important question:
Is the railway here for people, or is the railway here for people?
Stop it, will you? Give me the ticket.
- Hang on, he hasn't replied yet. - Give it to me.
Let's go, this is demeaning.
I based this short film story very loosely on a real event
which took place in Ceska Trebova. That was A Hard and Fast Marriage.
I was raped.
Raped? You're saying it as if you've just bought candies.
Any woman could say that. I mean, every other woman could.
When I mentioned the metamorphosis of a social conscience,
a conscience of people who were in charge of cultural sphere,
I meant dramaturgists like Sebor, Bor, Novotny etc.
Those were fantastic men, very open to discussions.
And when they intervened, they were doing so very gently.
What is it you have there? Let me see.
Name Krejcik means there comes a film which is not average.
Of course I was to find out later on our cooperation wouldn't be easy.
See, Mr Krejcik is a choleric person, just like me.
And the final version of the script must be adjusted so he feels secure
because he never improvises during the shooting itself,
everything must be precisely prepared in advance.
So things would often get pretty heated during the preproduction.
- Well, that's a proper hole. - He must have had bigger tongs.
Drop the joking, we all have the same tongs.
A drink and drive case again.
Sir, I am taking this driver's license away from you.
Me and Mr Krejcik went to a police office and its head-chief told us:
Gentlemen, we cannot ban it but of course neither support it.
I mean if you cast young Pucholt for the role of the young cop
we will have problems recruiting new young policemen,
we can offer them only a small wage
plus if they see the Pucholt guy, no one will ever join us.
Calm down. We've got our means that make even scholars calm down.
Perlustration!
I knew Krejcik would also cast Kmoch's bandmaster
who was an amazing natural talent, as well as Iva Janzurova.
Actually as luck would have it the whole cast was a great crowd
willing to help each other.
See, officer, we can never win over the crime with people like you.
You'll save us, I bet. Breath deep, come on.
Officer, why don't people like us?
I think Krejcik got to like Forman's early films
so he casted Hana Brejchova, Jana's sister as the main character
and I was to play the bride.
He gathered us in the Film Club and we started rehearsing.
But Hana wasn't a professional, she was overacting and shy
so he had to recast her role.
He took me to hairdresser, had them dye my hair blond,
we shot some camera tests over night and I got the role of the raped Hana.
- She seduced him! - Why would she do it? Come on.
She seduced him and you back her up.
What a nerve, coming into our kitchen.
- I can't leave her outside, come. - What a slut.
- What did you just say? - She didn't mean it.
Jesus, this is too much.
I recommend you to tell your daughter to be very careful
when talking about seduction.
Very careful!
I love Krejcik because he can get totally obsessed.
He says: You've got to munch on the cake piece by piece.
He loves the expression "munch" so I obey his instructions
and it takes him to next scenes.
I knew a garage foreman who gave a woman his watch and 300 crowns
and after he took it away from her that bitch reported a rape.
Sixties were basically about people recognizing real values,
accelerating truth and honesty.
Most of the films were critical but at the same time they had a vision.
No matter how harsh things they described, there was always hope
because there was a hope inside the filmmaker himself.
In this special moment I am sure you want to thank all those people
who love you the most, who have worked for you,
who have been looking after you,
trying to make your life better then their own has been.
Surely you want to make their lives joyous by being happy.
I do.
Hey, down to the village?
Can't you recognize me?
Films in the 60's would often take literature as a source of topics
which is logical because literature was also experiencing a boom,
writers like Hrabal, Paral, Lustig, Askenazy, or in Slovakia Tatarka,
Bednar, Mnacko, they all brought up new views of the world
and naturally they became an inspiration for filmmakers.
Among Slovakian filmmakers there was an exception,
Grecner's The Return of Dragon
was based on an older prose by Dobroslav Chrobak.
After writing his novel Chrobak was accused of plagiarism
by doctor Felix who was giving Chrobak a really hard time.
The main motif of Dragon is a loss of dignity
which is Chrobak's inner fight to gain back his reputation.
I thought this topic was worth it
because one becomes a hero only by starting something impossible.
He's come back to you.
Dragon is back.
If you remember Grecner's version
Dragon is not returning, he is actually leaving.
It is a totally skeptical view of an individual's attempts
to become a part of a society which once hurt him badly.
It is not one of typical folklore films as we know them from 50's.
Artistically and emotionally it heads toward paganism.
Dragon is a potter which is one of the oldest trades.
There are simplified, stylized costumes.
Even in the context of 60's the film is strange and unique.
I consider folklore a soul of a nation.
I wanted to portray this but at the same time
I wanted to get rid of its official concept as we knew it.
I think the symbiosis of folk and modern art
was best portrayed by Slovak surrealists who announced
Janko Kral was their guru.
The message of this nation's soul is hidden in Slovak ballads, songs
and in their primary folk costumes.
I wanted to respect these three columns when making Dragon.
A real folk art is not as showy as presented on stages back then.
There is a poor region which has the most beautiful ornament,
sober, simple and eloquent.
The richer the region, the more degenerated folk costume.
I refused to use all ornaments with an exception of a red thread.
The simplest Slovak folk costume is made of an ordinary white linen
seamed by a red thread.
After watching first dailies at Koliba I was totally desperate.
It had nothing to do with what I'd attempted to make
although Krajcovic created a perfect set,
to me it seemed artificial, as if made of plaster.
I was at my wit's end.
I showed some scenes to Barabas and asked him what to do now.
So we discussed this topic
and I remembered The Sun in a Net and Szomolany's zoom lens thinking
only zoom lens can help us focus on a human face and soul
and neglect everything around or create an ordinary surrounding.
We shot 90% of the film with the zoom lens
and it helped us create quite a mysterious atmosphere.
Casting a Czech actor into the leading role caused a scandal
among Slovak actors because for some reason they required a Slovak
as if a nationality could be visually captured.
The whole story of Dragon is based on Dragon being a foreign element
who does not belong to the local community.
I told Valach: Your face blends perfectly with Slovak surroundings,
I can't see any reason for him being pushed away by the others
and I need a face which apparently doesn't come from the village
so the locals have a reason to hate him.
And that's how I got to cast Lukavsky.
I asked Zelienka to compose something purely pagan
and he asked me to give him some more details so I said:
I'll lend you my recording of Stravinski's Oedipus Rex.
Dragon should enter the scene as something dangerous, mysterious
which tells you to be careful because here comes a magician.
I think Zelienka is a congenial composer,
he saw the rough cut once, went home and came with a score
which just mesmerized me, this was exactly how I felt it.
Without this score the film would be very dull
but the music brings a tension from the beginning till the end.
A story of powerful passions, strong characters
with deep imagery and poetics, that is Marketa Lazarova,
a literary work by Vladislav Vancura
who would celebrate his 75th birthday this year.
Our camera visited a camp of its feature colleague
who is filming this story.
The screenplay was written by Frantisek Pavlicek
and director Frantisek Vlacil.
Marketa Lazarova was perhaps the most distinct literary adaptation
not only due to its demandingness and long-run preparations
but because filmmakers managed to find a key to transform
a unique literary work enriched with a beautiful language
into a monumental visual piece of art.
For sure it worked thanks to Vlacil who never studied filmmaking,
he was an artist able to visualize the literary model.
Also we mustn't omit Frantisek Pavlicek's contribution.
Milan Kundera once said
that Marketa Lazarova is a ready screenplay itself
but it turned out to be wrong, the novel had to be rewritten.
Vlacil did not plan to make a historical film
he would speak about period films which is a more precise expression.
Period in terms of describing period cycles, desires,
or period twists of human mentality.
It is a brand new concept of a historical film,
very individualized, poetic, lyrical
and extremely expressive even when it describes pain, suffering, hurt.
Plus there is a concept of a clash between pagan and Christian view,
or German and Czech element.
We can spot some traces in Vancura's novel already
but Vlacil truly underlined it.
This film cannot be compared
to any other in the history of the Czech cinematography.
Stand up!
Let him stand.
Except making costumes which I personally value the most,
I was also in charge of setting up the whole production design.
I have to say I managed to create a very unique Czech film
because I invited awesome artists to take part in this project.
Zbynek Sekal made the crucifix,
Koblasa made milestones by the royal roads,
Vozinjak made the amulet tree.
Vlacil never talked to me too much,
for the first half a year he'd just check up on me if I was in bed,
he'd sit on a chair next to me and talk about 13th century,
about king Premysl Otakar II,
he'd retell me the whole royal story that had never been shot.
Sometimes he'd show me his script drawn picture by picture,
I was represented by a mane of hair with a nose sticking out.
Even today I am able to tell historians many interesting things
about 13th century.
We would wear costumes as often as possible.
Theodor Pistek was upset because the costumes were hand-made,
I wore a cap made of a snake skin.
We actually inhabited the costumes and the whole set
so when we got back to a civil reality, it felt weird
because we belonged to 13th century not to 20th century.
You shall be standing here
looking into your brother's face until the moment he dies
and then you shall be buried alongside him.
Vlacil essentially changed a historical film genre
by snipping it off 19th century.
The historical genre represented by Vavra or Krska had been developing
in accordance with a paradigm
defined by the revivalist movement in 19the century.
It picks up on graphic motives,
on interpretations of social groups or individual characters.
Suddenly here comes Vlacil and turns it all upside down.
We should also mention other people who worked on this film,
like cameraman Bedrich Batka, or composer Zdenek Liska.
They all contributed to the intense result, visual as well as sound.
Valley of the Bees was perhaps a bit unjustly overshadowed by Marketa.
It was written by Vladimir Korner
who made use of some props from Marketa Lazarova set.
A new creative tandem Vlacil Korner was born here,
together they made another excellent film Adelheid
which unfortunately also ended up in a vault.
I am not brave enough to watch you fall down, turn into tinder and pus.
I have come to make you my judge.
This current process which attempts to democratize our life
has not come from comrades from the Presidium of the Communist Party
but from the members of the Central Committee,
one of them was from Prague, other one from Brno, from some village,
other one was from some factory and they have done so independently.
A political liberalization in 1968
opened the door for Karel Vachek's feature documentary.
As a student he was a chronic complainer and later he paid for it.
His graduation film Moravian Hellas was made in a non-traditional way
and later he used this method
when making a documentary about a presidential election in 1968,
a merciless portrayal of adored leaders of the Prague Spring.
The transition must have been tough for comrade Novotny but I think
that as a real politician he should have come to this opinion earlier.
Why didn't he do it?
Because of his disaffection with life, with evaluation of reality,
it convinced him that he might have been done wrong.
I met Borovicka on the street, it was the spring and I asked him:
Could I make a film?
And he said: Come tomorrow, you'll get a camera.
The atmosphere was very similar to the one after 1989.
Those in charge were so new
you could just approach them with a smile and it scared them.
They would do anything for a friend who came to talk to them.
And once you approached them with a positive attitude which I did
they'd help you get to anybody you wished to meet.
I caught Dubcek on the street,
we were waiting for him in front of the Central Committee building
and he invited us in instead of some French TV.
I'm not sure. We're having lunch now and then we'll arrange it.
I have to check the list of invited comrades
because we're planning a plenary of the Communist Central Committee.
- We'll wait for you here then. - Please, do.
In that time they got 16mm cameras, recorders which did not hum
so Novotny and others felt good when being recorded at the Castle.
That's how 16mm cameras appeared in the Czech Republic.
Suddenly I see Ort-Snep running around the chambers with a camera
and it felt like a miracle. We wanted to make the most of it,
plus we got to use directional microphones.
- What distance can it record? - Depends on the surrounding.
Up to 10 meters. If he walks like 10 meters behind a guy on a street.
Where was it made? I see.
From car to car? No, it can't.
Before the shooting I met Passer
and he said: You've got to get there even if it was through a keyhole.
And I remembered the keyhole when they told us to leave
and said to the soundman: Get the mike to a keyhole!
Let's apologize for all the processes with subversive centres,
but we'll proudly acknowledge:
We mustn't forget to mention cameraman Josef Ort-Snep,
Vachek's close colleague
who was capable of being right in the middle of events
and thanks to him we see things in the film the way they are.
The declaration of workers in culture published yesterday,
especially as concerns the characteristics
and the range of features typical of the president of the state,
about how they oppose a soldier as the head of the state.
I discern shots that shine.
Then I take them out and go on chronologically like an idiot,
and when I cannot keep chronology any longer I make a kind of charade.
There's nothing else you can do.
Okay, we had a bad start, so the event at the end-
novelist often do this-
the key event that Svoboda had been elected we put in the beginning,
he was elected there and only then we set the election in motion.
Suddenly it got the rhythm and we got the ball rolling.
More or less chronologically.
They always listen to what MPs are talking about.
That's good. That's all I have.
Vachek was preparing some projects between Hellas and Affinities,
one of them was a feature film
but none of the projects got to be carried out eventually.
Surely it was because of his unconventional view of reality.
Barrandov management as well as the communist nomenclature
were reluctantly willing to accept Forman or Chytilova,
but Vachek's directive film expression
based on a grotesque and ironic distance was unacceptable.
I pledge allegiance to the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
and matter of socialism.
I shall perform my office in the interest of all the people.
I shall attend to benefit of our republic, observe its Constitution
and other laws of our socialist state.
Another "lonely runner" of the New Wave was Juraj Herz.
Unlike his colleagues he studied at DAMU, not at FAMU.
One of his classmates was Jan Svankmajer
and they shared an affection for broadside ballads and its poetics,
horror stories, old freak shows
and it was all reflected in Herz's short film The Junk Shop
and later he used it in his most important film of the sixties,
The Cremator based on a book by Ladislav Fuks.
Gentle, 17 years ago we met here on this blessed place.
Things have not changed at all, perhaps except the leopard here.
The late one must have been torn out of his animal fetters
by the kind Mother Nature.
Me, Fuks and Mrs Kalabova used to meet once or twice a week
for two years in cafe Slavia,
discussing the script piece by piece.
I'd say what I wanted and he would rewrite it
and so the script slowly developed.
We were actually changing the whole novel this way
and our kind dramaturgist Kalabova almost never said a word
but when she did speak out, she'd say something important.
- What is this? - You aren't scared, are you?
And this is Plajeaux, the mass murderer.
He would go murdering every day and every night.
When preparing The Cremator I got to know Sartre's work.
Back then only the first two parts were available.
The first part is written in a very conventional way,
the second part looks like this:
Charles came to a window, took his cigarette, threw it out,
turned to Marie drinking her coffee and told her this and this.
But Charles was in Paris while Marie was actually in Madrid.
Something like this.
And I loved the blending within one sentence
and thought this could be used in a film as well.
When writing a technical screenplay I blended several scenes,
I mean one scene starts somewhere
but it actually belongs to the next scene,
the same goes for dialogues etc.
You'e never seen boxing, me neither because I find boxing too rough.
Well, I can't wait.
One, two, three.
So you know what a real masculine sport looks like.
But I've always considered boxing a rough sport.
Or, let's say hard but it's alright. We need strong brave men.
Boxing is a martial art. Fist to fist.
He has always said: There were two options.
Either a color version without him or a black and white one with him.
Eventually he picked me so it was black and white.
I personally hate color
because it feels as if you printed texts in books in color,
a blue sky, green pastures:
The same goes for a film,
I think a viewer should get a chance to color it himself,
or he shouldn't be distracted from the story by some colors.
This is a mechanism for a rapid cremation
of a bigger amount of people.
It helps many souls free themselves from fetters of this existence
and fly up into the space and dissolve in the ether.
I think this is a big opportunity because in my crematorium
it takes 75 minutes to transform a corpse into a pure ash
and each corpse has its own cremator.
Fuks was convincing me to cast Mr Somr for the lead role
and I said Mr Somr is a great actor but he is not Kopfrkingl.
Hrusinsky is Kopfrkingl.
Back then he'd sit every night in Evropa pub, drinking beer
and I'd go drink with them so once I gave him the script there
and after reading it he said: There's nothing for me to play.
I kept convincing him and as I got probably too annoying
and he wanted to drink his beer peacefully, eventually he said yes.
He came to the shooting set,
and the first three days he was really grumpy
because we were taking only short shots in those days.
Then he realized that there actually might be something to play there,
his grumpiness turned into a good mood, we became friends
and as really good friends we eventually finished the film.
I was used to discussing score with my composer second by second,
with Liska it was the same, he just kept nodding
and as he was leaving he said: Should it be spooky or nice?
And I said: I'm spooky enough, be kind, please.
So they were recording the score
and the music played where I didn't want it to
and other way around,
he added some waltz to a murder scene, it was awesome.
He was an excellent dramaturgist.
In the end the main character goes completely nuts
and leaves for Tibet where he plans to manufacture huge cremators.
We took some new shots with Standa, the cameraman.
We were shooting in cafe Repre by the huge art deco windows
and behind those windows there were Russian tanks.
In the scene this old lady asks the young girl:
What happened to Mr Kopfrkingl?
And I moved the camera a little
and the women were replaced by the tanks.
By means of a long focus
we took a long shot of angry, grayish, depressed people,
tanks are passing them by and suddenly among all the people
there pops out a smiling face.
Kopfrkingl is coming back with the Soviet Army.
When our manager saw this he almost fell down his chair
and said: This must be cut out.
He cut it out and said he would put it into a vault.
The film was quickly banned anyway but this piece got lost.
There is a lot of work ahead of you. For the nation and mankind.
I'm glad you have come.
Let me step right among you.
Vihanova belongs to belated debutants of the sixties.
Her film Squandered Sunday was made in 1969
although she had made interesting films already as a student,
for example Fugue on Black Keys
a story about covert racism in the Czech society.
Strangely enough she, a woman,
situated her debut film based on a novel by Jiri Krenek
into a military settings.
But the main theme of a moral decay of an army officer
was described as a decay of human mentality as such
and a feeling of estrangement
in the middle of a mentally emptied society.
Anything you don't understand?
- Me? - Yes, you.
I understand everything, lieutenant.
Even minister's order concerning upgrading your knowledge of math?
I want you to report in my office first thing on Monday morning.
On Monday I have an army shooting competition, lieutenant.
Although the main character is a soldier I figured
the problem concerns all humans
even though in this case a military mindset is determining.
However, the soldier's problem could happen to anybody,
it would just perhaps lack the extreme conclusion.
Krenek was a professional soldier and his colleague did shoot himself.
What were you doing in a military area?
- We weren't in a military area. - Sure we weren't
Let's go, ladies.
Keep the bullshit to yourselves and kindly answer my questions.
Let me warn you that whatever you say can be used against you.
This film was stylized into a blunt black and white picture,
full of absurd situations and random writings.
I knew we would inhabit the Josefov quarter with old hags,
gypsies, stray dogs and military uniforms, nothing else.
Except a few erotic elements represented by those young girls
there was an isolated, strange and literally necrotizing world.
There is the leitmotif of a gypsy and the dog pawing in a sand
and it repeats again and again.
The situation in Josefov was worse than the previous year,
due to the Russians we had a limited access to certain places.
Half of the soldiers were Russian so the atmosphere was pretty tense.
But I have to say that our soldiers were very open and helpful.
Did you just cut your hand, Mr Arnost?
Wow, look how well you speak. Say Black bug's blood.
Black bug's blood, black bug's blood.
There is this scene
where the lieutenant walks down the stairs into a cellar,
he turns the light on and starts shooting at rats.
They brought the giant rats from the Prague sewerage,
they were crawling up walls
and one of them was sitting some three meters from me
on a pile of a coal dust, observing me with her red eyes.
I aimed at her, shot and missed!
And the moment the bullet just zoomed past its nose,
the rat jumped up and straight into my face.
Fortunately I put the gun here and she gnawed into its handle.
So I shook it down killed it with the gun.
We finished the copy of the film by the end of 1969,
Prochazka invited some people, Mr Hoger, Mr Tregr,
I also invited some people and they all praised the film.
I'm not sure now who exactly told me about the ban,
I think it was Prochazka who said it was banned from distribution.
Somebody claimed that the negative approach to life we present
cannot be shown to wide public.
Now say Black bug's blood but silently so no one can hear us.
Black bug's blood.
- And now even quieter. - Black bug's blood.
Hynek Bocan started as an assistant of older directors
and later in his own films
he always attempted to create an unsystematic characterization
of the Czech nation's nature.
His debut was Kundera's adaptation Nobody Will Laugh,
followed by Private Torment based on a novel by Paral
and then Honor and Glory based on Karel Michal's novel.
In 1968 he got to read The Decoy by Karel Misar
and turned it into a film which is even today considered brutal.
The story once again tells us about the situation in our society,
this time on the background of a reformatory.
Scepticism and brutality of relationships in the institute,
not only between inmates
but also between instructors and the young delinquents,
it metaphorically describes relationships within our society
in general.
We went shooting locations to Jezeri
when general manager Harnach called our production manager
and said: Mr Beranek, this film is a nonsense, it won't be approved,
let's call it off while we can.
And Beranek's reaction was really brave: We're just about to wrap up.
In fact, we had had only two days of work. But Harnach let it go.
Beranek arrived to Jezeri and told us about it
so we were sitting there and I said: This is a big chance.
We can actually make a film without any restrictions
And so we shot this paraphrase of the Soviet army in Prague.
We knew it wouldn't be approved anyway.
Still it caught me by surprise.
We had to modify 53 out of 90 scenes.
A strange thing was that it didn't really change the film.
Its message stayed the same, a prototypical look at society.
As for casting, it used to be director's business back then.
There were no casting studios.
We'd give auditions for non-actors
but we'd even travel to see mining apprentices
because ads probably wouldn't have been of much help.
Jirka Samal was the director of photography here.
Technique-wise it was a pretty interesting work
because we'd gradually use more and more coarse grain
and the final quarter shows the most coarse image.
A viewer might not realize this but as the image changes
it brings a documentary-like truthfulness into the film.
We used a handycam a lot, it was quite unique back then
but Samal knew how to work it,
the locations were real
so the whole thing turned out to be almost naturalistic.
There was this chairman of the Barrandov communists
who hated me for that and once he told me:
I used to be a commissioner of all prisons in the 50's
but none of them was as awful as that reformatory of yours.
But he also said: But these rebellions and stuff,
could you make some sequences out of it?
We'd screen it in reformatories
not for children but for the staff. It's so edifying.
Bocan's The Decoy was actually finished as late as in 1990
when they made a post dubbing. The same fate met other films,
Balada's Ark of Fools, or Vihanova's Squandered Sunday.
All these films were locked in a vault semi-finished
and final works were done some twenty years later.
Evald Schorm was considered the great thinker of the New Wave
and Pavel Juracek was its screenwriting star.
There may be a hidden line of his screenwriting co-operations
but already in 1962 he started working on a script called Gulliver
inspired by Gulliver's Travels
and it developed into a film called A Case for a Rookie Hangman.
When we look at this last Juraceks film
where excellent actor Kostelka
in the lead role passes through a tunnel into his subconscience
where he meets all the characters who haunted also writer Juracek
we can see this is about twinges of conscience.
Again there appears an Escherian motif, a floor which disappears,
worlds, spaces and times blending.
A real world, half a meter above another world which is not real.
Of course it is also a wonderful allegory of a government
which is totally separated from ordinary people,
presenting a view of what a normalization could mean.
In this sense the film is almost prophetic.
Each of us has his own Mrs Muller
whose light used to shine on us in the beginning.
I said: Good evening, Mr Muller, it is me, Lemuel. Lemuel Gulliver.
Lemuel Gulliver from Dlouha Street.
But it wasn't Mr Muller.
What I appreciate most is the very first chapter
where he actually paraphrased
and set Swift's work into the Czech context
and at the same time he made use of his knowledge
of Jung's depth psychology
because the hero's descent towards himself is very deep
in the sense of using details from a psychological field
like symbols, objects, or even a description of a landscape.
I'm sorry but if you're silent because of me
Gentlemen, you must understand
I know Pavel really suffered, he couldn't sleep,
bringing this film to the world was like a real labor pain for him.
But he was well prepared and so responsible
he would never come to a set and say I'm not ready to work.
As a writer and a director in one
he made it easy for a production manager to sort out problems
because Juracek would take a break
and in half an hour he would rewrite the whole scene,
not only with regards to weather
but often this new version was even better than the previous one.
Good day, professor. I've come to ask you about a dream.
I dreamt Marketa drowned because I stole a mug full of money.
I dreamt I was left all alone in this world
and met a full dressed hare.
And professor, I killed this hare.
Cameraman Kalis was very skilled
and I think he helped Juracek a great deal with his technique
because Juracek's strong point was writing, not a camera work.
- What is your name? - Lemuel Gulliver.
Your name is Oskar.
Read this!
For Oskar the hare's loyal service, Prince Munody.
Gentlemen, you don't think I am a hare, do you?
We got an approval to go and find Laputa island abroad,
so we went to France to see Mont Saint-Michel island,
unfortunately the situation here got a bit too complicated,
shooting abroad was out of question and we only took some pictures.
Later we made a collage
of a castle in Cesky Krumlov with photos from Mont Saint-Michel
and in the end it looked good.
As for constructing execution machines and thinking machines,
I introduced Juracek to my friends from a hockey team Paleta vlasti,
they were all artists like Hugo Demartini, Bedrich Dlouhy
and these sculptors created all these weird machines.
Who else could visualize a thinking machine, right?
A thinking mechanism. Hand drive.
This is where ideas come out.
They asked me about its capacity,
I told them a healthy man can create up to 10000 ideas a day
but it wasn't enough for them.
And so someone figured this machine could be powered by a horse gear.
They want to use a head of cattle but I won't allow this, sir.
This machine cannot be powered by an ox.
Pavel had big problems with finishing works
because the normalization was getting tougher and tougher
and more and more people were asking him to cut out this sentence
or the whole scene and he bravely fought for both.
I think the film is from 90% what he wanted it to be.
Local idiot called Jump-up rode me out of Balnibar country.
Once again I felt embarrassed and turned to this idiot:
Listen, Jump-up, is the watch going backwards or not?
And he replied: Come on, what is all this fuss about?
Can't you just enjoy its ticking?
Hanak started as a documentary filmmaker.
In the second half of the 60's
he made a series of great documentary essays
and his method of gathering material, fragments of reality
and shaping them into a new form,
it was also reflected in his feature debut 322,
which is extracted from a place
between a documentary and a feature film.
Citizens, for crossing the road use zebras only.
Lady in a black coat, yes, you, walk back. And try again.
Young lady, is this what they taught you at school?
This does not apply to you. Don't smoke on a street.
I was stroke by Jan Johanides and his book Privacy.
I guess I'd read the book once but very thoroughly
and I didn't want to read it ever again
because I was so fascinated by its story.
The main character gets into an extreme situation
and has to recapitulate and reevaluate his whole life
so it wasn't just me who felt this way back then.
The whole society needed it.
And I wanted to preserve a spirit of Johanides' story.
He trusted me and let me do things my way.
I filmed Johanides' work,
he was full of authentic experiences and I felt it too,
it was an image of Bratislava as I knew it in the early 60's.
The main shift in the story was
that the main character in the film was a communist
which was not very in, especially in The New Wave,
and as I talked to my two Czech colleagues they flinched a bit.
Where does Maria Valkova lie?
Valkova? If she lied in the East part, she's not here anymore.
She's my mother.
What's her name? Let me check in the book
I personally feel very attached to Hanak's feature debut 322.
Here the main character as well as topic are unique and uncommon
because it is about a man who seemingly lacks all qualities
necessary for a film character.
He actually impersonates mediocrity, commonness
but the more we get to know him the more we realize he is a proof
of a drama hidden inside everybody,
every one of us lives his big story, deals with big things.
As for characters in my films,
I myself wrote some of them, sometimes I had a co-writer,
many of them were written for concrete actors.
Mr Lohnisky used to play episodic roles in Czech films
but I casted him into the main role and he was great.
He didn't have to act because of his own inner authenticity.
Mrs Vinicka, the biggest star of then East-European cinema
was a beautiful woman and an amazing person.
She was surprised when I told her not to act but to believe
even though her partner was Mr Abrham whom I admired.
He was just fantastic.
Many of the non-actors who worked on my films,
they'd speak in their own words, live their own lives,
like Vlado Weiser who couldn't be listed as a co-writer
but the words and situations come from his own life
- Are you a boy or a girl? - A human being.
- Don't be cheeky, your ID. - What's this? Are you on duty?
- No. - Well, come with me, then.
It was by a documentary style of shooting
that The New Wave contributed to innovating feature films.
Feature films were in a crisis
and documentaries helped bring them back to life.
Celebration in the Botanic Garden is the only film which defies
the tendencies to portray gloomy and skeptical visions of 1969.
It is a powerful geyser of joy of life and playfulness
which assembles student mischief from Havetta's school years,
world of flower children, slapstick.
It is a paradox that this playful and nostalgically optimistic film
was made by the first one to pay for normalization.
Havetta died in 1975.
Celebration is a different film
and today when we speak about a postmodern type of film,
Celebration shows many features of something that came much later
and nobody understood it.
Although now we appreciate Havetta's faithfulness to his country,
his childhood, his home, he was not accepted in his times.
He was accused of using Czech instead of Slovak humor.
There were those who loved and those who hated this kind of film.
Among those who hated it
were rather those whom I considered friends or fans.
We loved what they called an intimate, or naive art,
a kind of mystical art, a direct relationship.
See, mystique creates a direct relationship between a man and God.
And this direct relationship to sources with a mystical aspect,
Havetta's perception of folklore,
it was closely connected with his strong experiences from childhood.
A man should love his country, or his nation, to hell with this.
We wanted to love our identity,
something we belong to with our soul, with our tradition
and it was much more important.
This is what folklore is about, a creative need to exist,
to return to something original like light, soil, trees, water.
Something pagan which at the same time contains instructions for use
but it does not lack the intensity of the original experience.
That's why there are bees, trees, a botanic garden, wine, euphoria,
an enthusiasm about life itself.
This enthusiasm is not biased, it is purely original.
You, take a look at yourself.
Now I've got the job, pension
Havetta was choosing from Slovak actors and went for those
who were capable of an instant expressive acting.
He tried Blazkovic and it was the right guess.
I'm fed up with this.
How do I look, huh?
Then there were non-actors, people he knew from his village,
or people he met somewhere, some of his friends, often artists.
Artists are capable of fooling around in a very honest way.
The circumstances of shooting Celebration in the Botanic Garden
were congenial, they wrote it, shot it and lived with it
just as if they were celebrating in the botanic garden.
The title not only expresses what they meant to say
but also their attitude towards their lives, work, methods,
it's all in the title and the crew lived up to it.
During the shooting it was often more important for filmmakers
to get Vladimir Popovic paint a wall in the background
than to control actors in the first plan.
I have always been fascinated
by the absolute freedom in this film which is so hard to achieve.
It is easy to be playful in your life but it's so hard in art
because of all the conventions and rules you learn at school,
from colleagues, other films.
Havetta's ability to set himself free when making Celebration
was the most important thing to me, it was a geyser of freedom
with no limitations whatsoever.
All those characters were my friends or people I knew,
my mum would collect material for me, I'd visit her very often
and went see those people as well.
The main character Frantisek Slimacek died in the age of 92.
He was the real hero of Countrymen
because he experienced it and I got to know him.
My dad was his teacher.
Dyer Otcenas chairman of KSC,
smallholder Zejvala, chairman of a minority co-op
and foreman Macala, the municipal secretary
have taken up authority with all implications
and the world has split into two.
I was driving with Jasny through Vysocina hills
where he wanted to find it.
For two weeks he'd talk about stars and pipes
but we never found anything.
But then Carda Kucera appeared
and I'll never forget our trip to the cartographic institute
where they showed him all their postcards
and he rummages in the pile of pictures for almost an hour,
then he picked three postcards, put them on a table
and the first location portrayed eventually became our location,
a village Bystra by Policka.
When we agreed on the title, that was it, the horseshoe,
even visually it was a perfect fit.
It was early evening and I started to dance with joy there
and as I was dancing, people started to leave the pub,
one of them was Mr Uncovsky,
who later became my advisor, a director of local amateur actors.
Mr Uncovsky, can we do it here?
And he said: You can do whatever you want to.
We didn't talk too much and Kucera said:
Vojta, speaking of Countrymen,
do you want to use a perspective camera like Toland in Citizen Kane?
I said: No, I want a flat picture, the way gothic paintings are done.
Jarda said he would have to order a zoom lens from Paris
and that's how we shot landscapes.
He was in charge of the visual aspect of this film,
I'd just say I wanted a close-up or a mid shot, or a wide shot
but I'd leave the composition up to him because he did it great.
Release our vicar, he's innocent.
You won't tell us who is or isn't innocent. It will go to show.
He is innocent and if you don't release him,
we'll arrange another gathering from all around this place.
I wanted my characters to speak in a Moravian dialect.
In the first version of the script I wrote dialogues in Kelc dialect
and my wife Kveta said she didn't understand it.
That slang was incomprehensible so I wrote it in Czech.
Babkal and Brodsky came from Moravia,
they were capable of making the language distinctive.
Mensik used his own, Brno slang.
And Matuska was the best for me.
Some people told me to cast a real actor
but Matuska did a great job.
As he is saying goodbye to his dead wife, it came out almost biblical,
as it is shot with the zoom lens as the dead girl is leaving him
who had danced with him one last time, told him he'd leave soon
and then he gets killed by the bull. That's how it actually happened.
I've always loved masks,
I went to Vienna and there they had all kinds of magazines.
Suddenly I found a magazine with pictures of masks
which are still being made in Austria, Germany and Switzerland.
So I took the magazine,
found two ladies who made the masks at Barrandov costume department.
I wanted to have Death there.
The first version was three and a half hours long.
After I immigrated they destroyed it and the copy has disappeared.
President of Cannes film festival saw the copy, he was my fan,
and after watching the film he cried and told me:
Jasny, you've got to cut the film down to two hours
because you have no publicity, no money, you have nothing.
So I went to see my friend, editor Jan Kucera at FAMU
and asked him how to edit it.
He had seen it a hundred times, gave me some instructions
and I used 90% of them.
A glass of rye.
Politics is a bitch.
I'm telling you there must be war. People will be fighting each other
until there is nothing but a cow and a fanner left
and these two will found better generations.
All My Good Countrymen is a summary as well as a reconciliation
which came in a time when everything started from a scratch.
The first public screening took place in July 1969
when normalization was beginning.
In the next few months
the whole Czechoslovak New Wave will be dispersed,
some will immigrate, some will never get to make films anymore,
others will make films after long years of silence,
some will bend down, others will stand straight
but one thing is sure, a myth came into existence here.
A myth which did not have enough time to fade away,
neither to be properly evaluated.
I just popped in by chance, I have a concert in Olomouc.
I wanted to talk to my dad, I didn't know.
What was he saying lately?
He said he shouldn't have accepted it.
He believed they would get together, he accepted it
and ended up alone again. When he felt lonely, he'd say:
Go and listen if there is anybody singing in the field
The main importance of the sixties is connected with national identity.
I think that the reaction to the Soviet invasion
was much stronger than it would have been
without the Czechoslovak film of the sixties.
Because many people saw the films and they felt as if they knew us.
I think that the profit which came with the films
was not only financial, we profited on countless levels.
But one thing is for sure,
this country is much better off when it supports its film
than when it does not.
This is your Rhodos, this is where you can frolick.
Let's eat what we've baked.
But what is it that we've baked?
What could we have done? What couldn't we?
Farewell, my good countrymen.
Farewell and if we were never to see each other again.
May our fate be fulfilled.