14 October 2013 The film face of the Conrad Festival
The Conrad Festival, which begins next week, does not only involve literature. It also includes a rich and diverse film programme accompanying meetings with authors. This year, together with the Kino Pod Baranami cinema, we would like to invite everyone to the review of the works by the Brothers Quay, screenings of two excellent Iranian films directed by Asghar Farhadi – A Separation, awarded with an Oscar, and his latest production – The Past, as well as Literary Lambs for Children, a special festival film section for the little ones, as part of which Pinocchio and Plastusiowy Pamiętnik will be screened. We would like to remind all cinema-lovers that the Brothers Quay will appear in Krakow and maybe watch their films together with the festival audience. You will definitely meet them at the screening of The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes on Friday (the 25th of October, 9:30 p.m.) – before the screening begins, they will introduce the audience to the atmosphere of their cinema. A meeting with the Quay Brothers, open to the public, will take place on Friday (the 25th of October) at 6:30 p.m. It will be hosted by Agnieszka Taborska and Marcin Giżycki.
What have we prepared for film enthusiasts?
A REVIEW OF FILM WORKS BY THE BROTHERS QUAY AT THE CONRAD FESTIVAL
Tickets to each of the screenings are PLN 10, a pass to 4 screenings – PLN 28.
Tuesday, the 22nd of October
9:30 p.m. (duration of the screening: 59’)
GABINET JANA ŠVANKMAJERA | THE CABINET OF JAN ŠVANKMAJER
dir. by the Quay Brothers, Great Britain 1984, 14'
Jan Švankmajer is a Czech film director, an alchemist of surrealism, a master of the stop motion animation technique. The Quay Brothers readily admit that he had an influence on their work. The title character is an animated puppet version of The Librarian, one of Arcimboldo’s most famous portraits.
ULICA KROKODYLI | THE STREET OF CROCODILES
dir. by the Quay Brothers, Great Britain 1986, 21'
The Street of Crocodiles is probably the best-known animation by the Brothers Quay. Terry Gilliam included it on his private list of the best animations of all time. Peter Greenaway wrote an enthusiastic review (read the book, see the film), and an anonymous IMDb commentator recommended: if you're only going to watch one Quay film in your life, make it this one!!!
PRÓBY DO WYMARŁYCH ANATOMII | REHEARSALS FOR EXTINCT ANATOMIES
dir. by the Quay Brothers, Great Britain 1987, 14'
One of the most amazing films by the Brothers Quay, the first one filmed only in black and white. The Quays themselves described it as “a private document of a straight line that flows, rolls down, and softens thanks to [changes in] sharpness”. The main puppet, obstinately rubbing a growth on its forehead, was inspired by Franciszek Starowieyski’s poster (the same one that appears on the door in the opening shot of The Street of Crocodiles) and gruesome 18th-century anatomical preparations of Honoré Fragonard, cousin of painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard.
STILLE NACHT I: DRAMOLET | STILLE NACHT I: DRAMOLET
dir. by the Quay Brothers, Great Britain 1988, 1'
Dramolet is dedicated to Robert Walser, one of the Quays’ literary fascinations (they later refer to his works in The Comb, Tales From Vienna Woods, and Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life). Dramolet was commissioned by the MTV channel as part of the MTV Art Break series aired between music videos. The soundtrack is found music – a crackling recording from Radio Moscow that became La Voix de Drohobycz for the Brothers Quay, a piece performed by the children’s orchestra from the Blatt secondary school (where Bruno Schulz occasionally taught drawing) conducted by Izydor Hoffman.
STILLE NACHT II: CZY WCIĄŻ JESTEŚMY MAŁŻEŃSTWEM? | STILLE NACHT II: ARE WE STILL MARRIED?
dir. by the Quay Brothers, Great Britain 1991, 3'
There is a small table, there is a little bottle, there is a white hairless rabbit, there is a closed door. There is a girl who grows and shrinks by turns to the somnolent rhythm of Are We Still Married by His Name Is Alive. Something is pressing from the outside, it wants to come inside, a gnarled hand knocks on the windowpane (maybe it came here from The Comb). Warren Defevner, founder of the band, asked the Brothers Quay to let him use fragments of The Street of Crocodiles as illustration for one of their songs. The Quays declined, but they liked the group’s music so much that they produced a completely new film. “It’s like a music video created by Max Ernst” – said the reviews of Are We Still Married. The Quay Brothers included the film in the Stille Nacht series, claiming that the same “black current” flows through it as through the remaining ones.
STILLE NACHT III: OPOWIEŚCI Z WIEDEŃSKICH LASÓW | STILLE NACHT III: TALES FROM VIENNA WOODS
dir. by the Quay Brothers, Great Britain 1992, 3'
In hunting terms, a buck with a non-typical rack is a stag with malformed antlers. One of the reasons for such deformation may be a shot in the testicles. In the opening shots of Tales From Vienna Woods, unsymmetrical twisted antlers appear with an inscribed sentence: in death I blossomed. The film, in a sleepy transformation, reconstructs the moment of shooting – the “stag” is a table with a skull in place of the head and cones in place of the testicles (a similar table – the same one? – appears for a moment in Are We Still Married, and the bullet on a long spoon looks like the pill from Dramolet). A kind of a Master of Ceremonies is a cut-off hand, one of the surrealists’ favourite motifs.
STILLE NACHT IV: CAN'T GO WRONG WITHOUT YOU | STILLE NACHT IV: CAN'T GO WRONG WITHOUT YOU
dir. by the Quay Brothers, Great Britain 1993, 3'
A continuation of Are We Still Married, the second film for a song by His Name Is Alive. The same triangle (the girl, the rabbit, and the demonic figure behind the door) in a slightly more elaborate setting. The scenery (stairs, shadows, curvatures, sudden twists of perspective) refers as much to German film expressionism as to the tarry drawings of Piranesi from the Prisons of the Imagination cycle. The entire action begins (similar to The Street of Crocodiles) with a falling drop – here: a drop of blood from the girl’s cut finger.
Wednesday, the 23rd of October
9:30 p.m. (duration of the screening: 83’)
GRZEBIEŃ | THE COMB
dir. by the Quay Brothers, Great Britain 1990, 17'
The Comb is the Quays’ first attempt at Robert Walser’s Jakob von Gunten. It emphasises the basic, fairy-tale pattern of the relations between the main characters of Walser’s novel – Jakob the Prince, Lisa the sleeping beauty, and Johannes Benjamenta. Apart from Lech Janowski’s music, the soundtrack also includes a whispered, multilingual “narration” by Witold Szejbal.
IN ABSENTIA | IN ABSENTIA
dir. by the Quay Brothers, Great Britain 2000, 20'
The film was created for the music of outstanding 20th-century avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. The composition that can be heard in the film is Zwei Paare (written in 1991 for the Freitag opera). The main character of In Absentia is Emma Hauck (1878-1920), a patient of a psychiatric hospital in Heidelberg. The Quays came across her letters in Hans Prinzhorn’s collection. In the letters to her husband, Hauck obsessively wrote a single sentence, putting the phrases densely one after another – “Herzenschatzi komm” (“darling, come”).
MASKA | THE MASK
dir. by the Quay Brothers, Poland/Great Britain 2010, 23'
With relation to the Polska! Year project, the Polish Cultural Institute in London and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute proposed making a film adaptation of one of Stanisław Lem’s Fables for Robots to the Brothers Quay. The Quays reached for the American edition of the series, where they found The Mask included in the collection along with several other additional stories. The story of Duenna (a homicidal cyborg-woman who is reminiscent of a complicated 18th-century automatic machine much more distinctly than Terminatrix) aroused their interest more than the proper Fables.
INWENTORIUM ŚLADÓW I INVENTORIUM OF TRACES
dir. by the Quay Brothers, Poland 2009, 23'
Inventorium of Traces is a documentary with elements of animation produced as a tribute to Jan Potocki (1761-1815), author of The Manuscript Found in Saragossa. The film was shot at the Princes Lubomirski and Princes Potocki's castle in Łańcut.
Friday, the 25th of October
9:30 p.m.
STROICIEL TRZĘSIEŃ ZIEMI | THE PIANO TUNER OF EARTHQUAKES
dir. by the Quay Brothers, Great Britain/Germany/France 2005, 99'
PLEASE NOTE: introduction before the film: the Brothers Quay
A demonic Doctor Droz (bearing the name of the 18th-century watchmaker and designer of human machines Pierre Jaquet-Droz) abducts Malvina, an opera singer. Some time later, he invites a piano tuner, Feliberto, to his island to have him tune seven machines designed by Droz. There, Felisberto meets Malvina, whom he tries to save.
Saturday, the 26th of October
9:30 p.m.
INSTYTUT BENJAMENTA, CZYLI TEN SEN, KTÓRY NAZYWAJĄ ŻYCIEM | INSTITUTE BENJAMENTA, OR THIS DREAM PEOPLE CALL HUMAN LIFE
dir. by the Quay Brothers, Great Britain 1995, 104'
The Quays’ first feature-length film. Jakob comes to a school for servants run by siblings Johannes and Lisa Benjamenta. Education in the institute involves constant repetitions of absurd gestures and formulas, aiming at turning the students into well-tuned machines. The presence of Jakob noticeably influences Lisa, gradually throwing her off balance.
LITERARY LAMBS FOR CHILDREN
Saturday, the 26th of October
10:30 a.m. LITERARY LAMBS FOR CHILDREN:
PINOKIO | PINOCCHIO
dir. by Enzo D’Alò, Italy/France/Belgium/Luxembourg 2012, 84’
After the screening – art classes for children
TICKETS: PLN 10
A wonderful, timeless story for the entire family, filled with humour and colours, that will enchant and amuse an audience of any age. A fantastic, colour-sparkling adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s book stays very close to the original, following Pinocchio’s transformation from a troublesome, but charming puppet into the nicest boy with his heart in the right place with kindness and understanding. Although we all know the story of Pinocchio, Enzo D’Alò’s dynamic narration brings the audience of any age into a new journey filled with wonderful images, unforgettable music, and lots of heart.
Sunday, the 27th of October
11:00 a.m. LITERARY LAMBS FOR CHILDREN:
PLASTUSIOWY PAMIĘTNIK
dir. by Zofia Ołdak, Poland 1980, 45'
After the screening – creative book workshops with Sztukolotnia
TICKETS: PLN 10
Plastusiowy pamiętnik (Plastuś’s Diary) is a story well-known to everyone from school, in which a small Plasticine man participates in the first school experiences and emotions together with children. He experiences various adventures and gets to know the rights and duties of a pupil together with Tosia and her class. The Sztukolotnia art workshops are original classes for children inspired by selected issues drawn from culture. By experimenting, kids make important discoveries, develop imagination, and learn about the world of art and technology.
IRANIAN CINEMA AT THE CONRAD FESTIVAL
Monday, the 21st of October
9:30 p.m.
A SEPARATION | JODAEIYE NADER AZ SIMIN
dir. by Asghar Farhadi, Iran 2011, 123'
Introduction before the film: Mostafa Zamaninija
TICKETS: PLN 12
Hailed by the world’s critics as a masterpiece and awarded an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, as well as the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. A Separation, directed by the creator of the famous About Elly, is a story about two families whose fates intertwine in a dramatic way. The film perfectly combines elements of a thriller and a psychological drama, keeping the audience in suspense until the unexpected ending.
Tuesday, the 22nd of October
7:00 p.m.
THE PAST | LE PASSÉ
dir. by Asghar Farhadi, France 2013, 130'
Introduction before the film: Mostafa Zamaninija
TICKETS: PLN 12
Four years after the breakdown of his marriage, Ahmad visits his ex-wife to sign the divorce papers. When he arrives, he finds out that the life of his ex is not as colourful as she said. The Past is a moving psychological drama, constructed with the precision of the best thriller. One of the greatest discoveries of the last edition of the Cannes Film Festival. The film stars Bérénice Bejo (The Artist), who won the Best Actress Award in Cannes, and Tahar Rahim, winner of the European Film Award and the César Award for his role in A Prophet.
