Karel Vachek: Poet Provocateur

5/31/09 to 6/28/09

The works of this influential Czech filmmaker inventively trace political and intellectual history and take part in trenchant cultural debate. Vachek joins us to continue the conversation at two screenings.

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Who Will Watch the Watchman?, June 14

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Past
Films
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Past Films

Záviš, the Prince of Pornofolk Under the Influence of Griffith's Intolerance and Tati's Mr. Hulot's Holiday or The Rise and Fall of Czechoslovakia (1918–1992)
- Sunday, June 28 2:00 pm
Karel Vachek (Czech Republic, 2006)
Elective Affinities
- Wednesday, June 24 7:00 pm
Karel Vachek (Czechoslavakia, 1968). Karel Vachek in person. With short Moravian Hellas.
What Is to Be Done? (A Journey from Prague to Český Krumlov, or How I Formed a New Government)
- Sunday, June 21 2:00 pm
Karel Vachek (Czech Republic, 1996). Karel Vachek in person.
Who Will Watch the Watchman? Dalibor, or The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin
- Sunday, June 14 2:00 pm
Karel Vachek (Czech Republic, 2003)
Bohemia Docta or The Labyrinth of the World and the Lust-House of the Heart (A Divine Comedy)
- Sunday, June 7 2:00 pm
Karel Vachek (Czech Republic, 2000)
New Hyperion, or Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood
- Sunday, May 31 2:00 pm
Karel Vachek (Czechoslovakia, 1992)

Karel Vachek: Poet Provocateur

5/31/09 to 6/28/09

The hybrid films of the influential director and teacher Karel Vachek, little known outside the Czech Republic, are presented in this first U.S. retrospective. Although Vachek (b. 1940) began making films during the Czech New Wave of the sixties, his controversial political works, including his early short Moravian Hellas and the 1968 cinema verité Elective Affinities, were banned, and Vachek was unable to continue filmmaking until after the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia. His epic Little Capitalist Tetralogy-New Hyperion, Bohemia Docta, Who Will Watch the Watchman?, and What Is to Be Done?-makes up for the time lost while he worked odd jobs in France, Germany, and the United States before returning home. Each clocking in at more than two hundred minutes, the four films focus on the “birth of a nation,” the period from the 1989 Velvet Revolution to 2002, as the Czech underground moved...

Vachek's obsessive, highly original films introduce us to figures who have remained on the cultural periphery and from that vantage point can, in his words, “say important things, even when the time does not want to listen.” In the Tetralogy and his most recent film, Záviš, Vachek provides intimate access to an array of key Czech artists, poets, historians, and philosophers as well as political figures, scientists, and religious leaders-many of them former dissidents-whom he draws into conversation with one another and himself to plumb the “state of the nation.” What results is critical of much in modern-day politics and culture, yet Vachek proposes an alternative, a moral society informed by dissident artists and intellectuals. Mixing cinema verité, improvisation, and staged scenes, Vachek's polyphonic films border on chaos; yet for those who are patient, his carefully selected threads weave into a fascinating and informative perspective on the political and intellectual history of the Czech Republic. Vachek often appears on screen driving home his points, cajoling his interviewees as he paces back and forth, at times ducking out of the frame or walking away from the camera-a provocateur philosopher of the absurd and the serious. We welcome him in person on June 21 and 24 to continue the conversation.

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Series curated by Irena Kovarova and Alice Lovejoy, and organized at PFA by Kathy Geritz. Produced by Radim Procházka Productions with the support of The Czech Republic State Fund for Support and Development of Cinematography. At PFA, the series is cosponsored by the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.

Karel Vachek: Poet Provocateur

5/31/09 to 6/28/09

Past Films

Záviš, the Prince of Pornofolk Under the Influence of Griffith's Intolerance and Tati's Mr. Hulot's Holiday or The Rise and Fall of Czechoslovakia (1918–1992)

Elective Affinities

What Is to Be Done? (A Journey from Prague to Český Krumlov, or How I Formed a New Government)

Who Will Watch the Watchman? Dalibor, or The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin

Bohemia Docta or The Labyrinth of the World and the Lust-House of the Heart (A Divine Comedy)

New Hyperion, or Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood