Jan Klusák – Axis Temporum

Black and white, DIGIBETA
Czech Republic, 2009, 57 min
WP – World premiere
Section: Documentary Films - Out of Competition

Synopsis

This black-and-white documentary captures composer Jan Klusák in the axis of time (axis temporum) between his 70th and 75th year with incomparable vitality, charm, and wit. Klusák composes a pivotal composition of this period and follows its genesis into a performance by Petr Altrichter. He allows us a glimpse of his childhood, which comes alive through photographs of his beloved father who perished in Auschwitz. And he freshly characterizes his various happy and difficult periods. Everything is permeated with his music – music as a life attitude.

About the director

Dan Krameš (b. 1962, Prague), independent director and producer, initially concentrated on film adaptations of literary works, including the Kafkaesque The Wardrobe (1988) based on the story by Thomas Mann (Bronze Amphora at the Montecatini IFF). At the beginning of the 1990s he founded ALPHA PLUS PRO, which produces films, documentaries, and commercial programs (over 80 short- and medium-length and 11 feature-length works). In 1994 he shot the documentary Magic Prague, a unique parable of the city as a woman over the course of the millennium. Thanks to his close association with the worlds of music and theater (recordings of operas and stagings, film inserts), a superb constellation of actors came together for his feature debut Agatha (Agáta 1999), based on a Chekhov story. This year he finished the documentaries Jan Klusák – Axis Temporum (2009) and Argippo Reborn (2009), about the famous discovery of a lost Vivaldi opera.