Haphazard travels of Sirman Deville around the Middle

[sally]

hmmmm...i don't suppose that when you were plundering the she-dr's demented attic secrets, there wasn't also some rattling circular cannisters scuttled away in the darkest corners? can you still go back and check?

[rischka]

hi icky -- i wonder if in your extensive travels you've learned anything about the country/region called volhynia. i'm making a family tree and a whole crowd of my mom's relatives seem to have originated there. near as i can tell it's part of ukraine or poland now but was officially russia at the time (19th century) this is the central europe thread right??

they MAY have been ethnic germans who settled in the area. those germans sure got around

[der kulterer]

unfortunately, no member of my family is living in the house anymore and thus i have no access to the house (including the attic).

but in the local public library, there are still (most likely) two volumes of biography of Leonardo da Vinci by Dmitry Merezhkovsky

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Merezhkovsky
Resurrection of Gods. Leonardo da Vinci (book 2 of the Christ and Antichrist trilogy, 1900). ISBN 4-87187-839-2

that contain pages full of scribbles by She-Dr.

she extensively quotes this edition of Leonardo's biography in her diaries.
and because i am a serious storyteller who doesn't want to present narratives full of misrepresentations i thought i will borrow (the title she extensively quotes) from the library and will check if she quotes without mistakes.
believe it or not, when i opened those two volumes (borrowed from the public library in my hometown) they were full of her handwriting.
it was obvious she held in her hands the exact same copies and i was thus able to expand my narrative (mostly based on diaries) also by transcribing her scribbles from pages of these two books.
ofc i struggled with a strong urge to steal those two books (pretending i lost them a paying a library fine).
but the purity of my character came victorious from the struggle and i returned the books back (without committing a petty theft).
so, it is maybe still possible to borrow those two books from the library, transcribe the scribbles and come up with an alternative story of She-Dr.
but i believe my version will be in any case much more complex because i possess the diaries and thus my version will always surpass any possible version based on just two books borrowed from the public library.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

ofc this is ECE thread, what other area can be truly called "the Middle"?
it is beyond my comprehension how anyone could have another concept of "the Middle"???
there is only ONE Middle, the ECE!

She-Dr. was a Polish lady born in 1893 in Odessa (nowadays Ukraine).
in Odessa was a Polish minority and due to her Polish roots she occasionally referred to herself as "Second Madame Currie".

about Volhynia (in Ukraine) i almost hesitate to elaborate because ultimately it might turn out we really might have some common ancestors, sis!
Volhynia is notoriously known in Bohemia as the abode where a strong Czech minority was/is present.
besides the wiki entry "Volhynia" ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volhynia
there is also the entry "Czechs in Ukraine" that says...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechs_in_Ukraine
Czechs in Ukraine, often known as Volhynian Czechs (Czech: Volyňští Češi), are ethnic Czechs or their descendants settled mostly in the Volhynia region of Ukraine, in the second half of the 19th century.
...
In 2014, after the revolution in Ukraine and the occupation of Crimea by Russia, some of the Volhynian Czechs from the Zhytomyr region expressed their interest in returning to their native homeland.

thus in 2014 the issue of "Volhynian Czechs coming home" was one of the highlights of local news.

[der kulterer]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechs_in_Ukraine
Between 1868 and 1880, almost 16,000 Czechs left Austria-Hungary for the Russian Empire. The reasons for their departure were the difficult living conditions in the Czech lands.
...
The bulk of the Czechs settled in the region of Volhynia. Some villages were set up in flat meadows, while others were located near existing Ukrainian villages. Local Czech names for the villages they lived in were formed from the original name of the village, which was supplemented with the word "Czech"

[rischka]

thx ickybro. i'm going to stop searching now as i came upon an apparently notorious ethnic cleansing event (one of many probably) and i don't want to learn more

history is a mess

[der kulterer]

"Volhynian Czechs coming home" in 2014 was not a result of some pogrom or ethnic cleansing.
some of the Volhynian Czechs just felt the situation in Ukraine is getting chaotic and they felt they (their offsprings) might get a better life perspective in Bohemia (the land of their ancestors).

[rischka]

this one involved germans and poles and ukrainians in world war 2. at least all my german relations were long gone by then

[der kulterer]

before reading "Bloodlands" by Snyder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodlands
i thought Lidice massacre (revenge for Heydrich assassination) was brutal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice_massacre
"Bloodlands" lists hundreds or thousands of such massacres taking place during WW2 in the region in question (Ukraine, Belarus, etc., etc.).
nightmare

mass killings of an estimated 14 million noncombatants between 1933 and 1945, the majority outside the death camps of the Holocaust

[sally]

believe it or not, when i opened those two volumes (borrowed from the public library in my hometown) they were full of her handwriting.

this is so amazing

[der kulterer]

i don't have pics of her scribbles on the pages of the biography of Leonardo da Vinci by Merezkovsky.
but those looked similar to her scribbles in other books that i found in the attic.
she had a quite irreverent attitude to books.
she used to say that she reads the books only to become aware to what degree humanity is still ignorant.
she felt she has full insights into the deepest mysteries of life and thus she was not looking for knowledge in books.
she was only reading books to familiarise herself with the author's ignorance and was making notes across the pages pointing out this ignorance.

[der kulterer]

tho i have to correct a bit my claim above.
she was irreverent to books in general and was just pointing out the ignorance of the author with her notes.
but she respected Leonardo da Vinci (he was one of the very few exceptions from the rule — Leonardo, Jesus, Madame Currie were held in esteem).
thus her scribbles in Leonardo's biography point out she and Leonardo had the same insights.

[der kulterer]

AN APPEAL MADE INTO SILENCE (Dušan Hanák, 1965)
https://letterboxd.com/film/an-appeal-m ... o-silence/

An old Czechoslovakian documentary (with English subtitles) about the artwork created by the mentally ill.

https://youtu.be/oXugOXkfI0U

[sally]

yes yes yes

https://twitter.com/acefilmeu/status/13 ... 4117855233

HAS ALREADY STARTED! is everyone in europe on furlough? argh! hopefully it will stay up some time or appear on kg...

[der kulterer]

omg, omg, omg, now i don't know what to do first if to eulogize the great BE SURE TO BEHAVE or the splendid WHITE PARADISE.
what a festive day for the cinema of the Middle!
once i will take a breath i will elaborate.

[der kulterer]

WHITE PARADISE (Karel Lamač, 1924)
https://letterboxd.com/film/bily-raj/

accompanied with an experimental soundtrack (played live during the screening).
https://youtu.be/Ri-licQjiig

fragile dreams built like crystal castles (and easily crushed into pieces).


Karel Lamač not only directed the movie but also played the main male character — first pic.
Gustav Machatý (director of Extase) plays a minor role of a member of the charitable society (who doesn't believe in charity) — second pic.


it is not a fly (flies) crawling on the lips of the main heroine (Anny Ondra or Anny Ondrakova) — those are just droplets of red wine.
i guess this is the only movie in the history of cinema where the main villain is captured by cops because he has been blindened by booze dropping from the kegs.
and i guess this is the only (silent) movie where a movie character explicitly quotes Zarathustra to make a statement about the matters of the heart.
i am not that familiar with the local silent cinema, tho i have seen a few movies (worse or better) but i was rather skeptical local movie production can offer a silent feature film at least close to f.e. Lubitsch.
but i feel this movie is not that far away — i was truly excited (wholeheartedly recommended).
and btw. it is a first-class tinted snow movie!


i watched/listened even the following webinar about the role of the "classics".
about "classics" forming a kind of framework that subsequently implies what can be considered as "contemporary".
question about the difference between "classics" and "canon" was left open (because it was raised too late).
but i listened rather absent-minded — i was still overwhelmed by the unexpected charm of the movie that preceded.

[sally]

oh that looks lovely! i sulked when i missed the beginning and went off and watched other movies instead, so glad to see it's still there. and snow!

[der kulterer]

BE SURE TO BEHAVE (Peter Solan, 1968)
https://letterboxd.com/film/be-sure-to-behave/

Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive Art
BE SURE TO BEHAVE
(A SEKAT DOBROTU)
(Peter Solan, Czechoslavakia, 1968)
It is one thing to make a fictional film in the West about unjust imprisonment in one of Stalin's jails; it was another matter to do so in Czechoslavakia, even under Dubcek, for who knew whether he would last. In this film a woman prisoner, harshly incarcerated, is suddenly released as unpredictably as she had been imprisoned; "Stalin is dead," she is told, and then, significantly, "Be sure to behave."

Without question, the best possible time and the last chance to really faithfully capture, in this case, the purely psychological nature of political imprisonment, which is part of our history, indeed any imprisonment of an innocent person who eventually begins (is forced) to question their innocence.

Excellent filmmaking from people who may have struggled with the idea of whether anyone would ever see the film, yet gave it their all. Solan as always has heart, Lenka Reinerova undoubtedly still has vivid memories and Milenka Dvorska her natural beauty. All of which is reflected in the precision and timelessness of this short, whose atmosphere cannot be approached today, perhaps only glimpsed from afar, there are only a few films that come close, but to show the thought processes of the incarcerated, which are divided into before and after... the consequences of sudden imprisonment, the limitations of space, activities and thought, or even the cynically routine attitude of the prisoners ("Before, there was a trial with the Slansky gang, all hanged."), in twenty-two minutes, is the kind of art you have to make as a protest with limited possibilities to make it this good and impressive.

Five hundred and twelve days later, she hears the child's laughter again...she smiles beautifully at him...the birds singing and indulges in her freedom, she can take as many steps as she wants, but she must not forget... behave, comrade.

The related text (upon which the film is based) by Lenka Reinerová was published under the title "Alle Farben der Sonne und der Nacht" or "All Colors of the Sun and the Night" or "Todos los colores del sol y de la noche". Written in 1956-57, first issued in 1969 (immediately all the copies destroyed), in 2001 reworked and reissued.

In her book, All the Colors of the Sun and the Night, the writer Lenka Reinerová describes her fifteen-month incarceration, most of it in solitary confinement, in Prague’s infamous Ruzyně prison, from where she was released without any further explanation when Stalin died in 1953. To keep herself occupied, she would pull out single strands of her hair and knot them into delicate chains. The guard, watching her from outside through the peephole in the door, would only discern the movement of her hands. Whenever he entered to find out what she had been doing, she would drop her miniature chains to the floor and her frustrated observer would storm out as dumbfounded as before. Similarly, her stories seem to be knotted from fine, elusive threads of memories, pulled from her head and quickly rendered invisible to the reader who wants to probe deeper, beyond the threshold of uncharted pain.

Lenka Reinerová (1916-2008)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenka_Reinerov%C3%A1
Reinerová, the oldest living German-language writer in Prague

Prague writer Lenka Reinerova: Kafka's Last Living Heir
She was a German-Czech-Jewish author who wrote in German. Treasured today as the last Czech German-language writer, she concludes the legacy of Prague's distinguished German-language writers including Max Brod, Franz Werfel, Franz Carl Weiskopf, Egon Erwin Kisch (the "raging reporter"), and, most prominently, Franz Kafka. Most of them were Jewish; quite a few were communists; many were murdered and forgotten, among them her mentors, colleagues and lifelong friends.

last few years i was regularly commuting to work passing next to this house (Plzeňská Street 949, Prague 5)...
IN THIS HOUSE LIVED FROM 1956 TILL 2008 PRAGUE AUTHOR WRITTING IN GERMAN LENKA REINEROVÁ

[der kulterer]

A SOUVENIR FROM CALVARY (Jerzy Hoffman, Edward Skórzewski, 1958)
https://letterboxd.com/film/pamiatka-z-kalwarii/

This documentary was shot during Holy Week at Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, where every year the faithful take part in the traditional Mystery of the Passion, recreating "in action" Jesus' way to Golgotha. Completely devoid of commentary and musical illustration (we only hear religious songs accompanying the procession), the film is an extraordinary ethnographic impression of the most important period in the Christian liturgical year.

The Souvenir from Calvary was made in 1958 and was read at that time in two ways. 1/ Also as "exposing the darkness of the simple people", and for this alleged message the film received an award at the Moscow Festival. 2/ For its real humanistic and ethnographic qualities at the same time, the work was appreciated by the jury of the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, which awarded it the Grand Prix.

https://vimeo.com/118587516

MARKET OF MIRACLES (Jerzy Hoffman, 1966)

A color-coded testimony of a bygone era. The magical world of a folk marketplace. Groups of imposters, specialists in black magic, home-grown inventors, and charismatic healers are gathered among the stalls. A colorful world, full of figures of the Blessed Virgin Mary, gingerbread hearts, and ointments for all ailments.

[der kulterer]

1/4
IN THE FLAMES OF ROYAL LOVE (Jan Němec, 1990)
https://letterboxd.com/film/flames-of-royal-love/

it takes only 15 min to reach the obligatory icky scene (the trademark of the local cinema)...


at first glimpse (based on the first 15 min), this film seems like a perfect time-capsule of the local state of affairs in 1990 — when one regime collapsed and the other one was not yet established.
a film highly recommended for the 1990/91 poll (IMDb says 1991, according to all the local databases 1990).
hopefully, during the 1990/91 poll subs will be available.

"art director" of this film was Michael Rittstein, a representative of the Czech Grotesque School (of the figurative painting).

The picturesqueness and expressiveness of the stories unfolding in his artworks, often bordering on the absurd, lead to his classification and identification with the Czech Grotesque School.

Němec’s The Flames of Royal Love (1990) is a veritable explosion of bottled-up filmmaking energy, adapted from Czech philosopher and proto-surrealist writer Ladislav Klíma’s novella The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch, published posthumously in 1928, and long a dream project for the director. A tawdry, raffish fairy tale centering on the hypergamous marriage between a cleaning woman (Ivana Chýlková) and a prince (rock star Vilém Čok) that quickly descends into a grudgeful war of wills, its content is very “Once upon a time…” but its setting is distinctly contemporary, with architect Václav Aulický’s rather infamous Žižkov Television Tower, a real-life science fiction monument still under construction at the time of filming, playing the royal residence.

Němec, like Herz possessed of a pronounced black comic streak, created the decadent and deranged monarchial mishegas of The Flames of Royal Love in collaboration with consulting artist Michael Rittstein, turning contemporary Prague into a loose, louche world of nauseous glut and clutter. Born 1949, Rittstein had came to prominence during the ’80s through a series of large canvases defined by Baroque exorbitance; searing, unnatural colors; painfully distorted figures; and, often, a sense of domestic stultification. With the likes of Jiří Sopko and Jiří Načeradský, Rittstein has sometimes been identified as part of a mini-movement, the so-called Česká groteska or Czech grotesque school, often framed as a response to the stultifying political climate of Czechoslovakia in the ’80s.

Something like a “Czech grotesque” school has its own storied history in the cinema, as the examples of Chytilová, Němec, and Herz profusely show, though the living links to that tradition are disappearing fast. Chytilová died in 2014, Němec in 2016, Herz in 2018, and Czech or Slovak artists possessed of their particular perspective, having both predated and outlived the Iron Curtain, so-called, cannot be replaced. What remains are their visions of excess, inundated with the obscenities of the system, whatever the system or regime of the moment might happen to be.

https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/dispat ... vary-2019/

[der kulterer]

2/4
IN THE FLAMES OF ROYAL LOVE (Jan Němec, 1990)

On first sight it would seem to be a satirical work poking fun at Prussian militarism and the degenerate Junker class, for which Klíma harbored a profound contempt. Though this aspect is certainly present, there is also a noticeable resemblance to the “gothic” or horror novel. Klíma deliberately tries to evoke powerful emotions and feelings of terror in the reader. Sudden reversals are attended by a mix of motifs both fantastical and rational, and the reader’s attention is cleverly engaged by mysterious phenomena. One might believe, if not establish, that Klíma was influenced by Walpole, Lewis, Scott, Hoffmann, and Poe and directly inspired by Lautréamont, in whose wake he found himself in close proximity to the Surrealists. This is suggested by another conspicuous feature of the novel: black humor. It is a drastic, sardonic, grotesque humor, the harshness of which is leavened by subtle irony and self-irony. Klíma’s place in literary history should properly be located, then, amid all the related currents that flowed into Modernism and that through Surrealism grew into absurdist literature.

Yet these analogies relate to the external aspects of Klíma’s work. The author himself gives us a deeper understanding of his intent and the true meaning of all the novel’s blackness: “The finale of everything isn’t ‘nothing’ but something more horrible, more incomprehensible, shapeless, monstrous, black – and a celestial refulgence. – I invoke the heart of the world as ‘Black Radiance,’ ‘Black Illusion.’” From this it may be concluded that he conceived the novel primarily as philosophical, that primacy was given to the ideas he wished to convey.

Klíma greatly enjoyed writing fiction, and he devised several literary techniques that, thanks to other authors, later became part of the collective heritage of twentieth-century prose. Behind all these experiments, however, stood his philosophical thinking, skillfully encoded under a fictional veneer. He did not disown his philosophy in his fiction, rather, he was of one mind with the dictum of his great paragon, Nietzsche: “I write my works with my entire body and life.”

The reader unfamiliar with Klíma’s philosophy likely will not suspect that his game of constantly shifting dream and reality, fantasy and reality,
illusion and lucidity is not just a whim or literary experiment, but the expression of his metaphysical thinking. His is a vision of extreme
subjectivism: the world is the creation of the individual’s imagination, his plaything; in relation to the world man is a god, is God, directing
everything; his will is the highest law, he himself is absolute will. This produces a dialectic of paradoxes. Everything can change into its opposite:
truth into lies, lies into truth, logic into illogic; no fixed border exists between dream and reality, life and death. The reader is always left in doubt
as to whether Helmut is dreaming or is awake, perceiving reality or suffering from hallucinations, and whether Helga is dead or alive. “At one
moment lunacy can seem like reason, at another, reason like lunacy,” Klíma writes. It is only mildly inconsistent, and an obvious concession to literary convention, that at the close of the novel the protagonist – who is essentially an ironical and parodic variant of Klíma’s god-man longing for
the stars – is revealed to have indeed gone mad. All the tempestuous events and horrifying visions have only been figments of his diseased mind. In
Klíma’s other work the endings are usually left open, a metaphysical question mark hanging over them – as it did over his life’s thought.

— A Prince Longing for the Stars (by Josef Zumr)

[der kulterer]

3/4
IN THE FLAMES OF ROYAL LOVE (Jan Němec, 1990)

oke, when i was 20+ (and thought the film falls short of the book) i was a dumb kitten.
now, being twice as old, mature, full of wisdom, i can credibly testify the film is charming.

in the other thread, a question was raised...

does he do the same thing to his wife's newly dead body in the movie that he does to it in the book?

my (belated) reply is, "yes, the hero attempts to fornicate with his deceased (and decomposing) wife even in the film!"

[brian d]

does he do the same thing to his wife's newly dead body in the movie that he does to it in the book?

my (belated) reply is, "yes, the hero attempts to fornicate with his deceased (and decomposing) wife even in the film!"

oh but in the book (unless i'm remembering incorrectly) he does even more than that to her (he, uh... deposits something... unpleasant... into her mouth )

edit: i've been looking through my copy of it and can't find where it happens, or where her ghost asks him about it, so i guess this is the next thing i need to (re)read.

[der kulterer]

mhm, checked the text (found it online) and you truly remember it vividly.
in the past (when the book was fresh in my memory), i probably noticed all those minor "shortcomings" and thus considered the film flat.
however, the film is praiseworthy!
omitted defecation or puking here and there is not a fatal flaw.

p.s. i found it in the scene when the wife (still alive) is thrown in the dungeon.
conclusion of December 14.
prior to...

All this was not quite, in the fullest sense of the word, gentlemanly or gallant. Yet it was vital to show her that I was not a “mangy dog.”

[sally]

2/4
IN THE FLAMES OF ROYAL LOVE (Jan Němec, 1990)

I invoke the heart of the world as ‘Black Radiance,’ ‘Black Illusion.’”

huh, when i was in my early teens, together with my best friend/first great love/carnal torturess, i developed a complicated theology/metaphysic/whathaveyou (details of which i remember nothing) that we named 'black sunshine'. this was no doubt based on a conflation of aleister crowley (who washed up in retirement in a nearby local coastal town, hastings, that my parents, comparing it to the more vibrant brighton, simply designated as a place where junkies went to die - so naturally as a gloomy child i was very drawn to that rotten decaying old smuggling town that crowley lazily damned in later life) so a conflation of crowley, and all the old pagan countryside rituals that were still enacted in various festivals that seemed perfectly normal at the time but now looking back on seem insane. (mostly dressing up & setting fire to & parading idols whilst very very drunk)

and then later, i found dear Ted: 'Two Legends'

Black was the without eye
Black the within tongue
Black was the heart
Black the liver, black the lungs
Unable to suck in light
[etc]...............

...............
Black is the earth-globe, one inch under,
An egg of blackness
Where sun and moon alternate their weathers

To hatch a crow, a black rainbow
Bent in emptiness
over emptiness
But flying

And also, since we are in the middle, i was too freaked out to mention it the other day when i got there, but the last lines of the literature-sick novel i was reading (that i reviled at first, but as usual came to utterly identify with) seem pertinent (i have a problem with last lines, i always think i should pay attention, they mean so much! but then i'm concentrating so hard that i understand nothing and it could be that i've never actually finished any book at all, anyway:

In the distance, far away, beyond everything, like a mirage of salvation rising from the void and the abyss, the sea was visible, with its shoals, swarms of white, triangular sails. 'Prague is untouchable,' he said, 'it's a magic circle, Prague has always been too much for them. And it always will be.'

https://twitter.com/LostfoundE/status/1 ... 7251416070

[der kulterer]

i don't remember having a special affinity to black/ness (darkness) in the past.
but since mushroom-eating, i do have it.
as described elsewhere, after swallowing mushrooms i started to perceive sensual stimuli as disturbing and i was urged to get deaf/blind (especially blind because eyes are more receptive) by closing eyes.
when the mushroom effect evaporated and i was again fine to look at things, i still had a strong feeling that light brings mirages (deceptive pictures) — darkness being "safer" and inherently more truthful (serving only as a background to (more reliable) insights).
now (when the trip experience is getting more and more blurred within my memory), perception of light and sensual stimuli (brought by light) seems again pretty okay.
in any case, the equations light=truth / darkness=nescience are not complete without the complementary light=nescience / darkness=truth.
i can attune to "two legends"!

there is a poem called "Magical Night" by Egon Bondy written in the 1950s.
in the early 1990s, i bought all 9 volumes of his "Collected Poems" (issued by a local (nowadays non-existent) publishing house called "Prague Imagination").
later, i was stupid enough to get rid of those books.
in any case, Egon Bondy was no less influential on my juvenile soul than Ladislav Klíma.
in 1978, the poem "Magical Night" was turned into an eponymous song by a local band called Plastic People of the Universe (the song appeared on their album called "Egon Bondy's Happy Hearts Club Banned").
in the song, one can hear the rhyming...
magické noci počal čas = the time of a magical night has come
my žijeme v Praze = we live in Prague
to je tam = it's a place
kde se jednou zjeví = where once (in the future) appears
duch sám = the Spirit Himself/Herself (in Person)
whenever i listen to this song, i am prone to believe there might be something magical about Prague, but otherwise (when i look around) it is hard to believe in "magic" — banality and consumerism prevail!

magické noci = magical night(s)...
https://youtu.be/WYAo-gkqQeE

[sally]

LOL'ing at the constant carousel of books flying in and out of your possession and your later cursing.

i get rid of most of the books i read, possibly only so i can have such regret (also to be sneakily less accountable, 'well, i simply can't remember and simply cannot check') aside from about 50 ones-i-cannot-part-with, all the other books in my house, in the bookcases, on the floor, going up the stairs, piled up on the sofa, are ones i haven't read yet. i live amongst unknown dreams (although some of the old paperbacks are beginning so smell a bit now, so it's stinky dreams when i finally do crack them open)

[der kulterer]

The related text (upon which the film (BE SURE TO BEHAVE) is based) by Lenka Reinerová was published under the title "Alle Farben der Sonne und der Nacht" or "All Colors of the Sun and the Night" or "Todos los colores del sol y de la noche". Written in 1956-57, first issued in 1969 (immediately all the copies destroyed), in 2001 reworked and reissued.

btw. on Monday i picked (in one of the local second-hand book shops) ALL COLORS OF THE SUN AND THE NIGHT (by Lenka Reinerová) and started to read it.
it is the 2001 edition, it is very cool and i hope my reason will not depart me and i will not part with this remarkable (Comrade Kafka meets Comrade Proust) tale.

[der kulterer]

4/4
IN THE FLAMES OF ROYAL LOVE (Jan Němec, 1990)

cinetopographic tidbits...

1/ Sternenhoch's royal residence...

1.1/ Žižkov Tower (Prague)


in installment 1/4 it is said...

its content is very “Once upon a time…” but its setting is distinctly contemporary, with architect Václav Aulický’s rather infamous Žižkov Television Tower, a real-life science fiction monument still under construction at the time of filming, playing the royal residence.

here are some further details...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BDi%C ... sion_Tower
The Žižkov Television Tower is a unique transmitter tower built in Prague between 1985 and 1992.

In 2000, ten fiberglass sculptures by Czech artist David Černý called "Miminka" (Babies), crawling up and down were temporarily attached to the tower's pillars. The sculptures were admired by many and were returned in 2001 as a permanent installation.

i started to study architecture in 1992, i.e. in the year of the tower's competition.
since the quote above calls it "infamous", i must admit i also hated it (in the early 1990s).
a popular urban legend was saying it is a tower hiding inside a rocket.
and purpose of this hidden rocket was as follows...
when the representatives of the local Neo-Stalinist system started to realize their regime is falling apart they decided to build a tower.
seemingly a TV signal transmitter.
but actually, an empty shell to hide a rocket.
they (allegedly) intended to use the rocket (when the system will collapse) to escape into outer space.
that was the popular narrative circulating in Prague in the early 1990s.
later (in 2000/2001), the tower acquired its "babies" and (somehow) became loved by the locals.
if (nowadays) anyone would attempt to demolish the tower (and thus also kill the "babies") it would trigger a huge uproar.
my attitude developed (over years) from disgust to positive indifference.
before the plague, (dirty rich) tourists could stay overnight on the tower (and feel like Prince Sternenhoch).
how the local tourist industry will look like after the plague (if Sternenhoch-like experience will still be available) i have no idea.

1.2/ Ještěd Tower (Liberec)
but Žižkov Tower is not the only local tower that plays in the film Sternenhoch's residence.
the other one is Ještěd Tower (situated in Northern Bohemia)...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Je%C5%A1t%C4%9Bd_Tower

Ještěd Tower is a 94-meter-tall television transmitter built on the top of Ještěd mountain near Liberec. It is made of reinforced concrete shaped in a hyperboloid form. The tower's architect is Karel Hubáček... It took the team three years to finalize the structure design (1963-1966). The construction itself took seven years to finish (1966-1973).

whenever the royal halls have sloping walls and tall narrow windows with rounded corners, it's inside Ještěd Tower...


Ještěd Tower is also extensively featured in f.e. GRANDHOTEL (David Ondříček, 2006)
https://letterboxd.com/film/grandhotel/

2/ strange wall seen during the execution scene...


it is a baroque Grotto Wall also called Dripping Wall or Dripstone Wall (in Wallenstein Garden)...

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/dripstone-wall-2

Constructed at the behest of Albrecht von Wallenstein between 1623 and 1630, the Wallenstein Palace enjoyed a centuries-long first life as a magnificent private residence for various generations of the Wallenstein family.

Despite the elite negotiations that have always taken place inside the palace’s handsome corridors, it is the Wallenstein Palace’s massive network of complex, geometric gardens that remain the biggest draw for the public since 2002. Fashioned in an early baroque style, the grounds were partitioned into several distinct areas, the most secluded and fascinating of which was known as “The Grotto.” In this portion of the garden, aspects of real and artificial elements of nature co-mingle, creating an eerily unreal landscape. Here, grotesques were allowed to reign supreme, including imagery of snakes, monsters, and random, distorted faces, while an aviary provided a crucial acoustic element.

Contemporary visitors to the Grotto remain most struck by the Dripstone Wall, created by things that, from a distance, seem to be dripping skulls. Closer investigation reveals the wall is made from a haunting, uncanny assemblage of stalactite-like rocks. Signs along the wall note that, if one stares hard enough, it’s possible to make out human and animal faces peering out from within the wall’s recesses.

3/ tunnel...

Some call it the Žižkov Tunnel, others the Karlín Tunnel; it depends which side of the tunnel you decide to take first. The most accurate name would be the tunnel connecting Žižkov and Karlín. Or Karlín and Žižkov? Anyway, it's up to you to choose which end you'll take first!

The tunnel is 300 metres long and runs under the hill of Vítkov. At first glance, it may seems rather dodgy, but don't be afraid, it's a good hideaway from rain or even a possible catastrophe! It was originally built as an antinuclear cover, this part of the tunnel still being in operation. The one thing you can't hide from in here are your very own problems. Jitka from the film Loners seeked comfort here, Ofka from Night Owls came down to vent her anger, and Karel Hrubeš, the main investigator from The Velvet Killers, ran through it and met the love of his life on the other end. And what purpose will the tunnel serve you?

https://www.zemefilmu.cz/en/film-locati ... ov-tunnel/

some of you might remember that i mentioned Vítkov Hill while speaking about a local futile attempt to make out of the dead Comrade Klement Gottwald a mummy (in the 1950s). so, the mummy was supposed to be installed on top of the Hill and the tunnel goes through the Hill.

[Umbugbene]

That's what I love about Prague, its wild variety of architecture with a respectable and intact collection of gothic, baroque, art nouveau, international style, plus a famous deconstructivist building (the "Dancing Houses") and supposedly the only cubist building in existence (although I'm skeptical that it qualifies as cubist, it looks to me like a variant of expressionism). That Žižkov TV Tower is kind of late for brutalism (which died out at least on this side of the Iron Curtain by 1980), but its massing looks brutalist to me. I like it more than a lot of the anonymous-looking TV towers in Germany. It has personality.

[der kulterer]

That Žižkov TV Tower is kind of late for brutalism (which died out at least on this side of the Iron Curtain by 1980), but its massing looks brutalist to me. I like it more than a lot of the anonymous-looking TV towers in Germany. It has personality.

yea, Žižkov TV Tower is "late brutalism meets late hi-tech".
brutalism was quite popular among local architects (in the 1970s-1980s) who strived to be in touch with the aesthetics behind the iron curtain.
ofc all was leaking through the iron curtain with a certain delay and thus local brutalism is a bit an echo of the brutalism.
the paradox is that these brutalist buildings were/are perceived by many locals as a part of the monstrosity of the local Neo-Stalinist regime of the 1970s-1980s (despite architects of these buildings actually intending to bring a Western flavor into the local urban landscape).
thus these local buildings were/are many times "infamous".
another brutalist building by Václav Aulický (author of Žižkov Tower) was recently demolished (tho with the uproar of those who can understand the wider brutalist context).
in 1970s-1980s, new Czech embassies built in Western countries were mostly brutalist.
Embassy of the Czech Republic, London... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_o ... ic,_London
Embassy of the Czech Republic, Berlin... https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvyslan ... %ADn%C4%9B
so it is a paradox that many locals who are concerned about local ties to the West and are worried about ties with Russia or China are still convinced that local brutalist architecture is a residue of Communist megalomania and want these buildings to be torn down.
despite i liked brutalism already in the early 1990s (liked Paul Rudolph, Smithson couple, etc., etc.), at that time i hated a few local buildings (that can be labeled as brutalist) and Žižkov Tower was one of them.
within my perception, the newly erected Žižkov Tower was something ridiculous, totally out of scale, and the massive white stuff on the highest part of the tower (the "condom") i perceived as creepy.
but as time passed i got used to the "out of scale" and i listened to Václav Aulický (in some documentary) about his reason why the tower looks like this (to avoid one massive tower, he divided it into 3 separate "pillars", etc., etc., he also mentioned that the initial preferred location for the tower was not Žižkov, etc., etc.) and i had to admit all he says makes sense and thus my initial antagonism shifted to positive indifference.

and supposedly the only cubist building in existence (although I'm skeptical that it qualifies as cubist, it looks to me like a variant of expressionism)

i like local "cubist" architecture and it is most likely that if i would be supposed to be a guide to someone unfamiliar with Prague and interested in architecture i would drag him/her first into the Museum of Cubism situated in one of the local "cubist" buildings.

https://delveintoeurope.com/cubist-museum-prague-guide/
Cubist Museum Prague Guide – one of the best niche museums in Prague

it is a place where one can fathom the local obsession with "cubism".
there you can see (in a cubist building) cubist chairs...


cubist sofa...


cubist box to store sugar cubes...


cubist lamp shade...


not to speak that not far away from the museum is a (one and only) cubist streetlamp...


not to speak that even one of the local cemeteries has got a cubist entrance gate...


and not to speak that the newly planned bridge across Vltava river will be neo-cubist (the obsession is still alive)...


and well... , yes, strictly speaking, it is NOT cubism (as a unique (elsewhere never seen) architectural style/genre) but it is a part (subgenre) of architectural expressionism (with its widely fancied crystals shapes).

but besides this local version of expressionism (that we somehow fancy to call "cubism") we have ONE MORE "cubism".
we call it "rondo-cubism" and it is in fact a local version of art deco.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rondocubism
"cubism" (expresionism) was a matter of pre-WW1 era.
when in 1918 a new state was founded (Czechoslovakia) many of those "cubist" architects thought the new state deserves its new (unique) architectural style and thus they transformed "cubism" into "rondo-cubism" (probably to make an analogy to the phases of "analytical cubism" and "synthetic cubism" in painting).
extensively borrowing from the visual vocabulary of local folklore, local art deco ("rondo-cubism") looks like this...