The Rite of Spring

Colour, 35 mm
Czech Republic, 2002, 55 min
Section: Czech Films

Synopsis

Min Tanaka, who heads the group Mai-Juku, is a remarkable personality of Japanese and world alternative theatre and dance, an artist whose body has become a language of the mind. The artistic documentary The Rite of Spring. was filmed at Tanaka’s farm in the Japanese village of Hokushu. There, young people from various countries come to participate in Tanaka’s workshops, to learn to free themselves from the rationality of consciousness and to work with their bodies in space and time. Some visitors to the summer workshop end up staying at Tanaka’s for several years or repeatedly returning; the decision to stay is only a question of an individual’s free will and courage. Spring Sanctification was celebrated long ago, before the development of farming, and took on various forms in different parts of the world. Using Butó dance, Min Tanaka asks himself what sanctification means for mankind today, what spring means and what is the meaning of spring sanctification. 

About the director

Jana Ševčíková (b. 1953, Prague), director and screenwriter, graduated in documentary filmmaking from Prague’s Film Academy (FAMU). Her graduation film, the ethnographic essay Piemule (1984) concerns descendents of Czech emigrants in Rumania and was shot during Nikolae Causescu’s totalitarian regime. After the aborted project Merry Shepherds, she produced and directed the short documentary Jakub (1992). In 1991 she received a grant from the Ministry of Culture for The Rite of Spring, a film about Min Tanaka, and for postproduction for the films Piemule and Jakub, which subsequently earned many international awards. The documentary Old Believers (2001), about the Russian religious minority living in the Danube delta region, was awarded the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury – Special Mention at the 50th International Filmfest Mannheim-Heidelberg in 2001, as well as the FICC Don Quixote Award at the 42nd Krakow FF in 2002.