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

Colour, 35 mm
Czech Republic, 2006, 147 min
Section: Tribute to Karel Vachek

Synopsis

Who’s the Old Dickhead around here, then? An errant three-legged dog and the nonconformist songster Záviš, whose "pornographic” lyrics brim with vulgarity and obscenities, are our guides through a world in which insanity and self-destructive behaviour triumph over common sense and spontaneity. What message would Edvard Beneš and Alexander Dubček like to pass on to this world? Or provocative Czech conceptual artists for that matter? The film’s absurd, often somewhat grotesquely apocalyptic images (a tomato ketchup bonanza, a battle reconstruction, motorcycle jumps, the Prague marathon, a dog’s funeral), frequently captured in very long shots, gradually compose a cautionary testimony of the spurious, indifferent and senseless existence of the individual in a society founded on mass "pseudoactivities”. But Vachek always offers possible alternatives to these "pseudoevents” and frustrating, logic-defying exertions: spontaneous independent initiatives such as quixotic ecological projects, or the CzechTek techno party, whose participants are destined to become the "trade unionists” of the new age. Vachek’s film essay surprisingly contemplates its underlying concepts using visual motifs as well – via anecdotal comparisons, witty banter and cheerful snippets of poetry concerning truths the director himself finds "astonishing”.