Film Archive

America

The Wish To Be a Red Indian: Kafka and Cinema 2024 / Amerika / Czech Republic 1994

Synopsis

For his feature film debut the director took on an extremely challenging assignment – to transfer one of Franz Kafka’s novels to the big screen. He settled on the early prose work The Man Who Disappeared, which nevertheless already contains all of the author’s key motifs, primarily the angst-ridden, solitary hero, and the surrounding reality as a labyrinth full of absurd situations and incomprehensible demands. In order to evoke the protagonist’s grievous states and the perils of his estranged world, Michálek made inventive use of expressionist film idioms: copious details of faces and gestures, scenes with no backdrop, steeped in chiaroscuro, and a score brimming with dissonance. The sets depicting the American urban landscape are markedly reminiscent of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

Zdena Škapová

About the film

90 min / Color, 35 mm

Director Vladimír Michálek / Screenplay Vladimír Michálek, Martin Duba podle románu Nezvěstný / based on the novel Amerika by Franz Kafka / Dir. of Photography Martin Duba / Music Michal Dvořák, David Koller / Sound Michal Dvořák, Radim Hladík / Editor Jiří Brožek / Art Director Jindřich Goetz / Producer Jaroslav Bouček / Production Simply Cinema, spol. s r.o. / Coproduction Česká televize, Barrandov studio a.s. / Cast Martin Dejdar, Jiří Lábus, Jiří Schmitzer, Oldřich Kaiser, Kateřina Kozáková, Jarka Rytychová / Sales Czech Television - Telexport / Contact Simply Cinema, s.r.o.

About the director

Vladimír Michálek (1956, Mladá Boleslav, Czechoslovakia). Selected filmography: America (Amerika, 1994), Forgotten Light (Zapomenuté světlo, 1996), Sekal Has to Die (Je třeba zabít Sekala, 1998), Autumn Spring (Babí léto, 2001), Of Parents and Children (O rodičích a dětech, 2007), The Messenger (Posel, 2012).