Archive of films Boring Afternoon / Fádní odpoledne
Czechoslovakia
1964, 16 min
Section:
Tribute to Ivan Passer
Year: 2008
The film A Boring Afternoon is a comic yet melancholic sketch describing the atmosphere of a Sunday afternoon in a pub on the outskirts of Prague. A few old regulars are passing the time of day, others have dropped in for a drink, while the local football club is playing a vital match to stay in the league. The film was part of the “generation manifesto” of the New Wave, Pearls of the Deep (Perličky na dně, 1965), based on Bohumil Hrabal’s early prose works.
Synopsis
The film A Boring Afternoon is a comic yet melancholic sketch describing the atmosphere of a Sunday afternoon in a pub on the outskirts of Prague. A few old regulars are passing the time of day, others have dropped in for a drink, while the local football club is playing a vital match to stay in the league. The story is founded on the unusual concurrence and contrast of varied fragments of conversation, song, trivial situations, gestures, silences and facial expressions which reflect the personality of the individual characters and their relationships with others. Four elderly ladies are playing rummy and singing sentimental songs from a bygone era; the landlord is exasperated by a disrespectful young lad who is reading a trashy novel; the morose Jupa nervously washes down his heart pills with beer while desperately lagging behind in a high-status dialogue about football with a customer bearing a pot of sauerkraut; the windows facing the street afford a view of a handbag-wielding woman “with enough curves and proportions to wake the dead”. A Boring Afternoon was awarded at the festivals in Mannheim and Locarno, and the French film journal Positif wrote the following: “All of a sudden, the greyness generates something unusual. The seeming absence of structure is replaced by secret chords, a singular climate, a certain quality of tempo and light in which we find the artist.” The film A Boring Afternoon was part of the “generation manifesto” of the New Wave, Pearls of the Deep (Perličky na dně, 1965), based on Bohumil Hrabal’s early prose works.
Contacts
Národní filmový archiv
Malešická 12, 130 00, Praha 3
Czech Republic
E-mail: [email protected]
www: www.nfa.cz
Bontonfilm, a.s.
Na Poříčí 1047/26, 110 00, Praha 1
Czech Republic
Tel: +420 257 415 111
Fax: +420 257 415 113
E-mail: [email protected]
www: www.bontonfilm.cz
About the film
Black & white, 35 mm
Section: | Tribute to Ivan Passer |
---|---|
Director: | Ivan Passer |
Screenplay: | Bohumil Hrabal, Ivan Passer (podle stejnojmenné povídky Bohumila Hrabala ze sbírky Perlička na dně / based on the story of the same name by Bohumil Hrabal from the collection Pearl of the Deep) |
Dir. of Photography: | Jaroslav Kučera, Miroslav Ondříček |
Editor: | Miroslav Hájek |
Producer: | Bohumil Šmída, Ladislav Fikar |
Production: | FS Barrandov |
Cast: | Kamila Turková, Leopold Smolík, Josef Vaništa, Jan Tožička, Miloš Končický, Ota Hurych, Bohumil Hrabal |
Contact: | Národní filmový archiv, Bontonfilm, a.s. |
Guests
Blažena Urgošíková
Film Institution Rep.
Vladimír Opěla
Film Institution Rep.
Aleš Danielis
Distributor
Ivan Passer
Screenwriter / Film Director
Marek Jeníček
Distributor, Producer
Michal Kroupa
Distributor, Distributor