CoMo No. 9: Czechia (January, 2023)

[sally]

image of god - ondřej vavrečka (2016) #CoMoCz

entertaining, but what this really is, is a hyper-annoying manifesto for justifying the nonsense that is czech hyper-creativity (presence of milan knížák is just depressing sour taste) god is czech apparently

[Holdrüholoheuho]

MELCHIAD KOLOMAN (Rudolf Liebscher, 1920) #CoMoCz

film → https://www.europeanfilmgateway.eu/deta ... 5ff27db056
article → https://scifist.net/2018/05/22/melchiad-koloman/
the other thread/post → https://scfzforum.org/phpBB3/viewtopic. ... 652#p41652

A mad scientist, an Indian fakir and a Japanese conman walk into a lab - and try to resurrect a dead alchemist in order to discover the secret of creating gold.

Professor Dobner seeks the philosopher’s stone, which would reveal to him the secret of creating gold. To this end, he searches for the notes of alchemist Melchiad Koloman, who, according to legend, succeeded in creating gold. After becoming acquainted with the Japanese Nakahito and the Indian fakir Arkaja, Dobner lets them in on his plan. The fakir is able to conjure up dead people and suggests to his colleagues that they attempt to resurrect Koloman so that he can give them the formula they seek. For this, they require a healthy young man. Nakahito finds the young libertine Marcel, who has squandered all of his assets and is suicidal. After being promised a carefree life for one year, he agrees to take part in the experiment. During the year, he falls in love with Dobner's daughter Vlasta and wants to start a new life, however, he must fulfill his part of the contract. The Indian’s experiment succeeds and Melchiad is revived. Marcel survives but loses consciousness. Once the revived Koloman has communicated all the details regarding the creation of gold, the Japanese man gives poison to Dobner, in order to have the secret all to himself. Before Dobner manages to drink the poison, though, he learns from the police that Nakahito is an international con man. Koloman dies of electrocution and his body disappears. The laboratory is destroyed in an explosion. Marcel’s health improves and he marries Vlasta. Professor Dobner finds serenity in raising his grandchildren.

A cheap production with awkwardly bad cinematography, but the earnest feel and the devoted acting make it enjoyable for bad movie fans.

Czechoslovakia’s first science fiction film

It ends with electrocution and a lab fire, thus making Melchiad Koloman the first sci-fi film to employ the classic Frankenstein movie ending.

btw. those who can only read the (English) synopsis and can't follow the Czech intertitles, should know that Melchiad was writing his notes in his own blood and when he died the script (of blood) disappeared from the book, so Dobner and Nakahito want to resurrect Melchiad to make the script (of blood) visible/readable again. Dobner and Nakahito tried to turn the blank pages into pages covered with the script by using various chemicals (in vain). then Nakahito (not Arkaja, as wrongly mentioned in the synopsis) got the idea that by resurrecting Melchiad they can make the script (of blood) obvious again (thus they involved fakir Arkaja and the guinea pig Marcel Žampach).

and btw. after losing all his own (inherited) and the borrowed money in gambling, boozing, and debauchery, the young dandy Marcel Ž. complains that now there is no money left to even buy a revolver (to commit suicide), and his fellow man (to whom he complains) instantly hands over to a dandy a few banknotes. what a remarkable cynism!

Writer, director, and lead actor Rudolf Liebscher as Marcel, about to blow his brains out.

[sally]

schmitke - štěpán altrichter (2014) #CoMoCz

[Holdrüholoheuho]

ONCE UPON A TIME IN POLAND (Filip Remunda, Vít Klusák, 2020) #CoMoCz

[sally]

searching - jan čuřík, antonín máša (1966) #CoMoCz

unmistakably czech new wave, unmistakably shot by talented čuřík, enjoyable first feature (so mildly schematic) by these two, neither of which went on to have much of a directing career (splitting into cinematography and screenwriting respectively) and including a nice comedic turn by menzel-as-actor....

wish i'd watched more 60's stuff for CoMo, but nevermind....

(also subs by jiri, who is evidently enjoying himself! ♥ )

[Holdrüholoheuho]

(also subs by jiri, who is evidently enjoying himself! ♥ )

true!

[sally]

toyen: the subversive baroness of surrealism - andrea sedláčková (2022) #CoMoCz

less interesting for the documentary than the act of witness and the surrealist pictures

[sally]

football tournament “for a silver cup” (1914) #CoMoCz

https://dafilms.com/film/8644-football- ... silver-cup

according to the description, this has footage of vlasta burian (in his earlier career of football player prior to acting) but i can't see him

[Holdrüholoheuho]

i can't see him

i think this is him ↓↓↓
looks like him and has a slightly different jersey (he was a goalkeeper)

[Holdrüholoheuho]

JAK STĚHOVATI KOSTEL (František Lukáš, 1967) #CoMoCz

short documentary about the reasoning preceding the moving of a church building in a mining town

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of ... ary_(Most)

During the sixties, Most's historic centre was completely destroyed to make room for the expanding lignite mines, a process that lasted until 1980. Unlike other historical buildings it was decided to save the church by moving it away from mining area.

An expert committee was set up by the Ministry of Culture of Czechoslovakia to supervise the project, presided over by academician Stanislav Bechyně. From 1969 the committee was led by Alois Myslivec. The important specialist-adviser was Emmanuel Gendel (1903-1994), well-known Soviet construction engineer, who subsequently became the USSR's leading specialist in moving buildings in the 1930s.

To move the building, a variant on a bow path was chosen. The transfer was overseen by the firm Transfera Praha, an organisation of the Czech Ministry of Culture, and was performed by Průmstav Pardubice and Škoda Plzeň.

Prior to moving the building, the peripheral masonry, the bearing and supporting pillars were reinforced, and the remainder of the western tower was demolished. The church circumference was reinforced by a concrete ring and the church was gripped by a steel framework construction on the inner as well as outer sides. The preparation work lasted seven years, as it was also necessary to demolish all houses in the transfer path and fill in the former opencast mine.

53 transport trucks were set on special rails, which were inserted under all statically important points of the building. These transport trucks worked using computer controlled hydraulics, as were four booms used to pull the church. During movement of the church on the road section, rails which had already been passed over were moved from behind the building to in front of it, allowing them to be used again.

Between 30 September and 27 October 1975, the church was moved a distance of 841.1 meters at a velocity of 1–3 centimetres per minute to the vicinity of the old hospital with a small church of the Holy Spirit, and it was set on an iron-concrete two-storied foundation. After the move was completed, restoration work went on until 1988, and the church was solemnly consecrated again in 1993.

This building was mentioned in Guinness Book of World Records as the heaviest building ever moved on wheels (12,700 t).

[Holdrüholoheuho]

WHEN THE SUN GOES DOWN (Natálie Císařovská, 2014) #CoMoCz
student film (with Eng subs) → https://vimeo.com/111039058

Tereza is sculptor and her husband Adam is film director.
She suffocates in the relationship and she cant’t even concentrate on her job.
Vicious circle of this situation moves when Adam’s brother Mikey shows up.

[sally]

adventures of robinson crusoe, a sailor from york - stanislav látal (1981) #CoMoCz

[Holdrüholoheuho]

John Lennon plays aging Robinson in this Czechoslovak puppet animation. Unfortunately, Yoko Ono doesn't play Friday. And unfortunately, Friday is not played even by David Bowie. Though there is a sequence in the film, parrot Poly (an abbreviation of Polydor Records) is suggesting to call Friday instead of Friday rather Thursday's Child. But Robinson (John Lennon) rejected the nonconform idea and thus David Bowie couldn't appear by his side in this remarkable film.

[rischka]

that looks adorable

[Holdrüholoheuho]

WHAT IS BEHIND THE CANVAS? (A JOURNEY FROM TIŠNOV TO PRAGUE, OR HOW KAREL VACHEK BROUGHT BACK HIS PAINTINGS)
(Haukur Hallsson, 2016) #CoMoCz

What Is Behind the Canvas? is a short portrait of the filmmaker Karel Vachek. Besides being a known Czech filmmaker and the Head of Documentary department at FAMU, Karel Vachek is a painter. The film follows Karel Vachek as he travels back to Prague with his paintings from a completed gallery exhibition in Tišnov.

https://dafilms.com/film/10843-what-is- ... -paintings

Legendary Czech documentary filmmaker and former head of FAMU's documentary department Karel Vachek returns to painting after 35 years. On the way from his exhibition in Tišnov, he shares his memories and distinctive views on art and life.

i have seen those paintings in 2017 in Prague...

https://naugallery.cz/en/exhibition/karel-vachek/

A film director, poet and painter, Karel Vachek, presents his paintings, part and parcel of which are faces of students and tutors (former students) of Documentary Film Studies at Prague ́s Film and TV School. Part of the exposition are works of Dagmar Vachková, Ludmila Vachková-Drhová, Petr Vachek and Sophie Leonor Vachková.

[sally]

bohemia docta or the labyrinth of the world and the lust-house of the heart (a divine comedy) - karel vachek (2000) #CoMoCz

♥♥♥ epic effort to close (almost) como with, and if i had any doubts about the qualities simmering in the czech soul, these 4 hours and 13 minutes will decisively declare all those terrible maladies still curling around the remnants of soviet invasion and reaction

it is perfectly edited (to vachek's mischievous, mystical, ironic tune), a masterpiece...but would advise to have a patient jiri on hand to send a zillion screenshots to (demanding who, where, what, why) to make the context that much richer

[sally]

soooooooooo, in hotel for strangers i was jerked out of my new wave lull by the appearance of an explicitly gay character, and thus realised that, aside from the ambivalent toyen and 90's east-ploitation porn, i hadn't come across anything that wasn't strictly straight until the 2000s....so went digging....

summary of meagre findings:

most notable (only?) beloved national actor: eduard cupák
early directors: františek čap (moved to yugoslavia) and václav krška
interwar implied: the affair of colonel redl (karl anton, 1931)
'queer moments in heterosexual plots': muži v offsidu (s. innemann, 1931), advokátka věra (m. frič, 1937), velbloud uchem jehly (h. haas, o. vávra, 1937), prosím pane profesore! (z. hašler, 1940)
'cross-dressing': holka nebo kluk? (v. slavínský, 1938), poslíček lásky (m. cikán, 1937), pozor, straší! (k. lamač, 1938), venoušek a stázička (č. šlégl, 1939), vy neznáte alberta? (č. šlégl, 1940)
1961: homosexuality decriminalised in czechoslovakia
first explicit mentions in the new wave: hotel for strangers & schorm's return of the prodigal son (although i don't remember that)

but it's krška that gets the most attention and cool sounding articles:

https://is.muni.cz/do/rect/metodika/VaV ... ations.pdf
(chapter 2)

https://rcin.org.pl/Content/64781/WA303 ... manski.pdf

(tldr: the soviets undermined any revolutionary potential from queer images by appropriating them into their authoritarian garbage)

although the two films above, and most others of his and those mentioned above apart from the innemann (maybe?), don't seem to be available or have subtitles.

so i watched a krška that is and does, and aside from the post-vachek apparent ever-present czech miasma of mushroom allegory, and 1940's female nudity:






i'd say that the film isn't so much coded, as pretty fucking obvious....

magical river - václav krška (1946) #CoMoCz

delightfully charming tale of a man living a lie, married to a shrew, trying to find freedom in nostalgia and a return to nature, then accepting himself and starting again. (had read synopsis previously and had assumed it was some silly whimsical nonsense but it isn't at all....it's beautifully shot and i would watch more from krška now if i could)













st sebastian on the right there!

[Lencho of the Apes]

Colonel Redl (of the 1931 title) was a RW Austrio-Hungarian military commander and big ol' queen; his story was treated more explicitly in the post-60s a least once, though they seemed to muff the actual nature of his gender-nonconformity. One of those movies that Karl liked better than I did -- shall I dig up the title/director?

[sally]

Colonel Redl (of the 1931 title) was a RW Austrio-Hungarian military commander and big ol' queen; his story was treated more explicitly in the post-60s a least once, though they seemed to muff the actual nature of his gender-nonconformity. One of those movies that Karl liked better than I did -- shall I dig up the title/director?

is that the szabó one? i vaguely remember something vaseline-lensed altho tbh i think i always got it confused with his mephisto as well for some reason (my library had the two dvds an age ago and they both had red covers) apparently there was a german version in 1925 (!) and given the mad shit that was going on in german silents at that time i'm not gonna totally dismiss the idea that it didn't veil any allusions...



final film of czech como:

the little false cat, or when a woman gets her own way - svatopluk innemann (1926) #CoMoCz

one of three films vlasta burian and innemann made for oceanfilm (the other two being the loves of kačenka strnadová, and the lovers of an old criminal) this one is slightly rougher (not sure if it's the earliest or just lacking the presence of anny ondra as per the other two) but still hilariously insane







i really like these innemann comedies, but he's an 'interesting' director. went crazy under occupation, wrote a play about hitler, and died in 1945 whilst being investigated for collaborating with nazis. which makes this film slightly chilling because innemann 'cooperated' with director-scum václav binovec, who was 'implicated' in the arrest of karel hašler - in this film playing the fussy dentist - who was sent to mauthausen where he died due to

On 22 December 1941 the Germans poured water on him and left him outside in the December frost to get frozen like an ice sculpture

[Lencho of the Apes]

szabó

Yeah, Szabo.

I miss Greg's old, old thread dedicated to pictures of people sticking their tongues out.

[sally]

i have no memory of that thread! sounds like a nice idea....

i'm gonna miss czech como, still have tons to watch.....

[Holdrüholoheuho]

bohemia docta or the labyrinth of the world and the lust-house of the heart (a divine comedy) - karel vachek (2000) #CoMoCz

a zillion screenshots

A labyrinthine portrait of Czech culture on the brink of a new millennium.

Egon Bondy prophesies an inferno of global capitalism,
Jim Čert admits to collaborating with the secret police,
Jaroslav Foglar can’t find a bottle-opener for his beer,
while Ivan Diviš makes observations about his own funeral.

Director Jiří Krejčík can’t make movies and has a go at Vachek in front of the camera instead.

In mid-battle, Karel Vachek goes down on his knees before the inventor of Semtex.

This is the Czech Republic at the end of the 1990s. Vachek’s extensive film essay, examining the state and hidden mycelium of Czech scholarship, develops into a strange natural metaphor. The woodlands of Czech thought are interwoven, sustained and influenced by unseen threadlike hyphae, thanks to which even those that seemed withered and destroyed rise from the dead once more. The film itself becomes part of this process.

[Holdrüholoheuho]

CoMo Epilogue Or KV Grand Reader

the main (literary) source to KV's realm of thought is his book (published in 2004)...

Karel Vachek:
A Theory of Matter: On Inner Laughter, the Schism of the Mind, and the Centrality of Fate

KV was close to his wife, his sister, and his brother, thus the following book by his sister can't be omitted...

Ludmila Vachková:
EGO/Cookbook

in 2008, the first (and last so far) KV monography was published...

Martin Švoma:
Karel Vachek etc.

besides, i could also find the following 3 (KV-related) texts in English (article, interview, obituary)...

https://www.filmcenter.cz/en/news/get-i ... rel-vachek

Get inside the mind of Karel Vachek

Article by Petr Fischer for Czech Film magazine / Spring 2020

This year, legendary Czech director Karel Vachek will be internationally premiering his latest opus, Communism and the Net or the End of Representative Democracy, in The Tyger Burns, a program of the Rotterdam International Film Festival that highlights “the gaze of the old filmmaker.”

The Tyger Burns (a reference to the William Blake poem “The Tyger,” with its famous line “Tyger Tyger burning bright”) features new and recent films by directors who were already active when the Rotterdam festival started in 1972.

The films of Karel Vachek do not fit very well into the traditional genre categories that we usually use to think about cinema and other art forms. The imagery of his films spills over and out into an in-between space where we struggle to put a name to what we are seeing. Although not a problem for the films themselves, which, thanks to their editing structure, infiltrate the viewer’s mind quite naturally, their indeterminate form defies categorization, and therefore — not paradoxically but unavoidably — a more personal understanding.

It is probably human nature that most of us need a map, or at least some basic bearings, before we are able to step into a labyrinth of images and characters, and allow its magic to speak to us.

In Vachek’s films, this problem is addressed through two words: essay and novel. This is meant to suggest that a film is always nothing more than an inconclusive attempt to draw attention to the way the mind is in motion, to capture the movement of thought, a goal best achieved through a long, extensive narrative that, as Walter Benjamin wrote, attests to the failure of human dreams to grasp the mystery or essence of life.

Vachek’s latest project, a four-part, nearly six-hour opus titled Communism and the Net or the End of Representative Democracy, is notable for not only not accepting Benjamin’s thesis concerning the essence of the novel, but deliberately refuting it, as it strives to arrive at the mystical source that gives rise not merely to art, but to the art of living, if not life itself.

Inspired primarily by the work of his brother, Petr, a painter of enormous canvases, Vachek attempts to create an all-encompassing film, taking in everything, a “grand tableau” of colossal proportions, a Bosch-like bulletin board of the world.

“There can’t be just something there, there has to be everything,” says Petr in the film — though speaking of his painting, he could just as well be commenting on the approach of Vachek’s film itself.

As a matter of fact, we see this same expansiveness in the other works Vachek has made since 1989: in particular in the tetralogy The Little Capitalist — New Hyperion or Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood (1990–92); What Is to Be Done? (A Journey from Prague to Český Krumlov or How I Formed a New Government) (1993–96); Bohemia Docta or The Labyrinth of the World and the Lust-house of the Heart (A Divine Comedy) (1997–2000); and Who Will Watch the Watchman? Dalibor or The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (2001–02) — as well as the same attempt to include, insofar as possible, everything important. Vachek’s aim has always been to show the transformation of society and consciousness in what is not immediately visible yet nonetheless, unobtrusively, arranges the life of the whole.

In some sense this is the opposite of what Vachek did when he started out making films in the ’60s. Whether in his famous work Moravian Hellas (1963), which dealt with the growing irrelevance of folklore, or the lesser-known Elective Affinities (1968), examining the election of a president, Vachek was enamored with the immediacy of contact sound while having a camera on site to capture the action, and his preferred format was (pseudo)reportage.

Here the filmmaker is exploring particular phenomena: the rawness of folk culture and its cultural abuse; the presidential election as a political process — these form the frame of the film, the borders within which his compositions of imagery are played out.

Post-1989, he no longer made “reportage,” abandoning phenomena in favor of background and assumptions. Vachek turned his attention to the manifestation of things, the process by which something emerges and becomes apparent, becomes an image, though what matters to him is not the image as such, its content and form, but what it emerges from and how its appearance occurs. In this regard, Vachek’s filmmaking resembles the movement of modern phenomenology, which in the wake of Husserl and the exhaustion of his scientific concept of philosophy, can only be maintained by turning from pure phenomena to pure manifestation or revelation.

The stream of images Vachek produced after 1989, then, resulted in work completely different from his previous films in terms of structure and internal logic: curious mosaics in shifting configurations, like mental maps composed from the thoughts of “the people in the center” and “the people on the margins,” maps on which, in hindsight, we can recognize the historical movements we lived through but were unable to perceive clearly while they were taking place, to say nothing of the substratum from which they sprang.

Yet it is precisely this essential “invisibility” that is carefully preserved and intensified in Vachek’s imagery. This is also why his films are best understood and speak most powerfully with the passing of time; over time they grow, increasing in intensity and flavor: they ripen.

At first glance, Communism and the Net, or The End of Representative Democracy exhibits the same novelistic approach seen in his earlier works. Again, a curious mental structure grows before our eyes, and though we may be looking in at it from outside, it is simply a mirror image of our day-to-day reality — albeit with one important difference: While in previous films, some more or less open space remained, both inside and outside of the structure, since the goal was to depict a slice within the space-time continuum, this time Vachek seeks to achieve a closed space of absolute perfection, in an attempt to create an all-encompassing film with the same magical effect as the paintings of his brother Petr (or like those of Hieronymus Bosch, in which what appears to be a chaotic configuration is actually perfectly and precisely organized, as revealed by compositional drawings underneath the paint in Bosch’s large tableaux, recently discovered thanks to X-rays).

There are two ways in which Vachek as director attempts to create the perfect “omni-film”. The first is by the enormous compilational editing of his own work; the second by overloading his images with additional meanings, exposed and superimposed on top of one another as if we were watching the appearance of a secret message in invisible ink, the revelation of some cultural palimpsest.

So fascinated is the director with the modern concept of “the net” that he sees it everywhere — in maps of artists and authors, in a stream of images of great books and important politicians, in compilations of quotes, imposing an older, literary order on the endless stream of images.

All these webs of associations are woven into the foundation of the world as we experience it; they are not random but in fact constitute the mystical structure of the universe, which normally remains unseen although we can certainly sense it (here we see the senses taking precedence over reason; the influence of Vachek’s sister Ludmila), and we can also make it visible through art — writing, painting, and film.

Having expanded on the subject in his book A Theory of Matter: On Inner Laughter, the Schism of the Mind, and the Centrality of Fate, now Vachek attempts to depict on screen: through imagery and the recomposing of images, but most of all through editing, which, as demonstrated by Orson Welles, among others, is where the true magic of cinematography lies.

As Vachek himself says: “Note the way it is edited. You see, that is where the inner laughter is hidden. I’ve seen it already at least fifty times, and I still laugh.”

And what we should be paying the most attention to? “There are two ropes we cling to in life. One is our encounter with what is given, causes and effects; the other is our encounter with the essence, also known as God,” Vachek explains in his film as he also does in his book. God, he says, is merely a different type of given, taking his inspiration from the philosophy of Spinoza. In his view, we are so afraid of this separateness that we live an illusion of free will to keep from going mad because of the burden we would bear otherwise. “And yet, the only freedom we really have is to remain in God.”

Provided we can ignore the undeniably self-referential framework of Communism, which may get in the way for many, since really what we are watching is an exploration of Vachek’s mind and his attempt to remain in God, the film shows us a whole new world. It is not just a panopticon of society, where the politicians of today meet those of yesteryear, party leaders and popular singers come face to face — the Pope encounters economist Ilona Švihlíková or historian Jan Tesař while we succumb to the cleansing laughter that is, after all, the point of this work — but there is also a highly complex structure created, an interweaving of webs of reciprocal links and references, the reading and interpretation of which provides a useful guide on the road to freedom, when understood in the way Vachek has described. So it is also a net or a web in the sense that we commonly understand it today, that is, the digital interconnecting of free individuals, just another reflection, another configuration of God, which becomes the one who can save us.

Communism scoops up in its net everything important to society — politics, economics, philosophy, art — and finds a way through this tangled knot by means of editing. If you sit through all six hours, gradually you will see Czech culture revealed as the battlefield of a classic power struggle in which ideologies vie for dominance, with their power only now and then overshadowed by the charisma of a historical personality — the allure of a figure whose vision extends further or deeper than the know-it-all politician chasing money and power.

With his faith in “our Czechs,” who see through the world to the essence the 79-year-old Vachek so fervently seeks, there are times when the director can be incredibly irritating. His foursome of so-called national mystics — Ladislav Klíma, Edvard Beneš, Jaroslav Hašek, and Alexander Dubček — is also cause for great skepticism.

On the other hand, his obstinacy and doggedness in his lifelong quest for an essence that is often repugnant and callous toward humankind, as Communism demonstrates, ultimately wins our sympathy. In a world carried away by the trend for speed and high energy, Vachek continues to make slow, oceanic films that must be patiently and attentively read, like the good novels of the old days, filled with mysteries and revelations. At first it may be boring and maybe even hard work, but anyone who makes it through the first half hour is guaranteed a rich reward in the end, the bliss of experiencing an everything-film.

That is a conviction shared also by the director, who, like his brother Petr the painter, would just as soon blanket his picture in Naples yellow to express the penetrative revelatory power of sunlight, a halo of eternity. There are at least flashes of this magical color in the editing, which shines a new light on what Vachek has been doing all his life. So what about communism and the net and the end of representative democracy?

On the road to learning how to free ourselves of ideology (the ideology of power and of money) by following the essence, we are all equal; in the ideal egalitarian web of liberated individuals, there can be no talk of representation. When it comes to the freedom to remain in the essence, no one else can represent us. And somewhere around here is where communism begins...

https://www.filmovyprehled.cz/en/revue/ ... rel-vachek

The clever part is beyond our ego. Interview with Karel Vachek

MILOŠ KAMENÍK, 24. 4. 2020

Karel Vachek was born in 1940 in Tišnov. He graduated from the Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague with Moravian Hellas (Moravská Hellas, 1963) and in 1968 ade his first feature documentary, Elective Affinities (Spříznění volbou; awarded at the Oberhausen festival), showing backstage politics during the Prague Spring. Not having been allowed to shoot during the normalization era, he emigrated in 1979 and came back in 1984. He only shot his second film after the Velvet Revolution. In 1992–2002, “The Small Capitalist” tetralogy by Vachek was premièred in cinemas, consisting of New Hyperion or Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood (Nový Hyperion aneb Volnost, rovnost, bratrství, 1992), What Is to Be Done? A Journey from Prague to Český Krumlov, or How I Formed a New Government (Co dělat? Cesta z Prahy do Českého Krumlova aneb Jak jsem sestavoval novou vládu, 1996), Bohemia Docta or The Labyrinth of the World and the Lust-house of the Heart (A Divine Comedy) (Bohemia docta aneb Labyrint světa a lusthauz srdce /Božská komedie/, 2000) and Who Will Watch the Watchman? Dalibor, or the Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Kdo bude hlídat hlídače? Dalibor aneb Klíč k Chaloupce strýčka Toma, 2002). Similarly to his latter works – 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) (Záviš, kníže pornofolku pod vlivem Griffithovy Intolerance a Tatiho Prázdnin pana Hulota aneb Vznik a zánik Československa 1918–1992, 2006) and Obscurantist and His Lineage or The Pyramids’ Tearful Valleys (Tmář a jeho rod aneb Slzavé údolí pyramid, 2011) – Vachek tries to capture the noteworthy thoughts of figures of arts, politics, philosophy, science and other areas, in a form lying at the intersection between an essay and a poem, within the time frame of several hours. He has been teaching at FAMU’s Department of Documentary Film since the mid-1990s and was the Head of the Department from 2002 to 2019. He has no less than two generations of young Czech documentary filmmakers claiming allegiance to his educational influence. He summed up his thoughts in his book A Theory of Matter (Teorie hmoty 2004), and in 2008 Martin Švoma published his monography Karel Vachek etc. In October 2019, the Ji.hlava IDFF screened his new film Communism and the Net or The End of Representative Democracy (Komunismus a síť aneb Konec zastupitelské demokracie, 2019) which has been in distribution since November 6. The international première took place at the Rotterdam IFF in January 2020.

Your latest film Communism and the Net or The End of Representative Democracy is five and a half hours long, and you worked on it for five years, three years out of which you spent editing it. It is a work of dozens of motifs, thoughts, and sequences both from archives and borrowed, all of them interwoven and multi-layered. How can you tell that a film is done when working like this?

A film is done when there is nothing left to be told in a more precise way. When working on it, you add newer and newer motifs because it is a world of a novel. You turn around the fates of many people, creating an opinion which then “hovers” above the film. The viewers do not follow the film itself but rather their own thoughts occurring to them during watching. I spent three years editing in here with three ladies. Mmes. Papírníková and Všetečková can push through what is on their minds. Then there is Mrs. Pařezová – with her I can tell when something is wrong. We sat here six hours a day, six days a week, Saturdays included. You start watching what is done and go on until you get an idea what to do next. During all this, a new material comes in and you watch it without knowing where you would put it. You are basically searching for the way the film should be, and perceiving it as a living organism; you can see that its head is slightly askew or one arm too long, and you improve and improve so that it really works for the viewers. After all, I explain it in the film itself that I have been seeking to find a spiritual balance that would suggest to the audience members that there may be something beyond their ego. After the screenings, people told me they felt like floating. They were not, of course, but their state of mind was different. I found out about the existence of this state of mind when I bought Dante’s Divine Comedy as a young boy. After reading some books you feel like having blue smoke inside your head. That sounds stupid. But it basically tells you that the thing is bigger than you.

It works for me. Just like with your previous works. When I am watching your films, my head gets full of thoughts and contexts that I would have had without that film – even though the particular thoughts cannot be heard in the film. To what extent is all of this deliberate in your work?

There is no “self” participating in my work; there are other sources every being in the world has available from the inside. I sound stupid saying things like that, but that is how it works. The “self” is a combination of information and feelings, when you live through those influences and do not dissolve them, you enhance the “self” in the viewers as well. This is what for example Herzog, Kieślowski and Tarkovskij do – what is important for them is for the two to love each other, for the weather to be raining, and for the trees to be whispering. They create many emotional states from which egos are built and you cannot hear yourself. I can’t do that. I try to dissolve that with laughter, I call it the inner laughter. It does not mean that you must hoot with it. Some authors can do that, for example Jacques Tati in his Monsieur Hulot films. It can also be found in Artaud, Blake, Dante, even in Cervantes and Hašek. Some authors know this exists, but they play with it in a magical way. For example, Herman Hesse, that is terrible; he’s like Herzog and the others. It’s a really funny work.

Have you ever shot someone only to realize later that it wasn’t good?

No. Either you have the person in it, or you don’t, and then you must tell yourself that this is what it was supposed to be. I try to make all the people in my films distinctive and memorable, to connect with the audience through an important thought. For example, the original script of Communism (editor’s note: an extract was published in Analogon No. 77; it was supposed to be a staged film with many actors) which I did not use in the end is about 160 pages long, and we have not raised enough money for it. I would have needed several times more money in millions of Czech crowns than we had to shoot with that many actors and all the sceneries. But having written it, I kind of sorted all the topics in the film. And it was also a good practice for me to spend the time when we had no money to shoot writing (editor’s note: the previous film by Karel Vachek, Obscurantist and His Lineage or The Pyramids’ Tearful Valleys, was finished in 2011). I write, I paint; I do these sorts of things just to keep my brain running.

You already tried to make a staged film – in vain – in the 1960s. What would be the advantage in making a completely staged piece of work?

In a staged film, the actor shares with you a fixed idea that has been prepared beforehand. Without actors, you search for these ideas in living people, waiting for them to come up with something. I can devise a scene and give it a literary form so that it becomes a theatre play – because all staged films are a kind of theatre. The only difference is that the microphone is very near. But this new film is not a play; once again it proves that you can’t build anything in a night, but you can shovel lots of gravel. That may be my approach. You shovel the gravel of existence in the right way, keep what remains in the sieve, and put it all together. Which means you go back to the literary work – you put the words together so that a deep context emerges.

In the film you claim that in the art of sculpture, it is the volume that is important and not the concept or the surface. Can this be applied to cinematography as well?

The volume is the most essential thing in a sculpture – there is a surface as well, but it is not that important. Some sculptors only create on the surface, they consider it the main thing. The worst thing is when a sculpture remains a concept, when there is no volume and no surface, just something along the lines of a literary joke. For example, when they dress this statue at the National Theatre in various costumes. That is quite terrible. But a sculpture is not a joke – and a film is not a joke. Once again, it is the volume that matters. Something that cannot be seen, the inner balance. It means that you feel good with it all the time and that it is not just comical. I try to be funny, but I am not comical.

You mean comedy as a prevailing form?

Well, rather trying to be clever. Take the good soldier Švejk, for example: he’s neither clever, nor stupid, he’s not ugly, he’s nothing! That can also be peaceful.

Talking about Švejk: can you think of any other similar figure in Czech literature or film?

Švejk is the most brilliant modern Czech novel. There’s nothing better. But, for example, Vladislav Vančura’s film Marijka the Unfaithful (Marijka nevěrnice, 1934) is also brilliant, better than his literary works. But many people cannot see that; there was even a Czech critic condemning it as an anti-Semitic film. It is definitely not an anti-Semitic film, and first and foremost, it is the dictionary for all the Czechoslovak New Wave. I noticed that during my studies. I may have not needed to see the French and the Americans, in fact! We are still not able to appreciate it enough. Yet it all fits together even with the music by Bohuslav Martinů. I find it more interesting than any other music he wrote, actually.

In your new film, you use parts of all your previous works. How did you decide what to put into Communism? Have you been searching for a new context, or was the idea to remember certain people?

I originally thought that I would watch all of them and choose the scenes. Then I decided against it, but when editing some scenes in Communism, I just suddenly saw an addendum in one of my older works. I couldn’t believe it. There was no long decision-making process. It reminded me of painting – you have just used blue and simply know that the next colour to be used is red, so you go and use it, that’s it.

So it is intuitive?

I don’t like the word “intuition.” It sounds like anticipating what is to come. But you are not anticipating anything because that “self” of yours is not anticipating anything. You’re not the clever one – the clever part is beyond our ego.

Is that the gnostic approach you talk about in the film?

Truly clever people have never thought that it is their doing.

Is that God’s doing, then?

There might be a word for it. Even God, for all I know. What is God, anyway? God is everything we don’t know, but it is not what the churches engage in. Everything we don’t know is part of the reality. And nobody knows how big this reality is yet – just that it takes loads of work and that the reality tells itself what’s supposed to come now in the deepest reality of itself. Something works mechanically; there are these causes and effects influencing it; something only happens after there is a contact with the essence, out of the deep conscience. Komenský uses a beautiful term: “the depth of safety.” Everything is safe in there unless you fall out of it.

How can one get to be like that?

That’s what I would like to know myself. My wife was born that way, or happened to be that way. My sister got to it thanks to some intellectual work she did, and my brother had many qualities that just fell into his lap. And I am the stupid one who actually goes and shares it with the world. I am not as capable as they are, but I still got my share out of all of that.

Is that what you try to capture in your films?

I am some kind of a world emissary – how many painters know my brother, for example? How many men of letters study my sister? Not to mention my wife! So, I impose myself into the cultural context and try to draw them in as well.

How do you choose your locations and get in touch with your protagonists? For example in Bohemia Docta, you shot with Milan Knížák at a cemetery…

Knížák is a little light in the darkness. Those who can be “deeper” must protect their abilities in some way so that it actually could enter that reality of ours. Such was the case with Karel Gott’s brilliant timbre as well. Most of his songs were kitsch, with the exception of those by Šlitr, but people understood that he is a deeper person thanks to his voice. Despite the fact that he lived his life in a very not-deep way, maybe even in defiance of the common sense.

Did he protect his talent by being on good terms with the communists and later with our current president, Zeman?

Well, that’s horrible. The truth is, though, that it is not entirely possible to deal with these people. I wanted to shoot with him once, but a short phone call was enough for me to understand that it would not be possible.

Why?

Because he didn’t know what he’s doing. He behaved in a way so that his timbre could be heard in the Czech Republic, and that was it; he knew nothing else about anything else.

And how do you choose your locations?

You can guess on your own. When making Záviš, the Prince of Pornofolk, I wanted to shoot a polar bear in the zoo. Since my little son and I had started visiting it, the bear had been pacing to and fro. We go there to have look, the soundman opens the newspaper and says: “Hey, the bear died last night!” and that’s when I knew we were on the right path. We then shot how they tighten its skin. If you behave in a certain way, you receive these signals that you’re on the right path, and then you try to understand what you did. For example, I have a great cameraman, Karel Slach. I tell him what to do it, but he always does it differently. It’s terrible, but I always try to read into his work. Most of the time it turns out that it is much more intelligent than what I wanted from him. He is a deep person.

To what extent do you arrange the scene? Just whether you are going for a static scene or a dynamic one?

I set up the static scenes on my own, doing the composition, but once the camera starts moving, he always does that.

You often leave “mistakes” in the frames. For example, when the cameraman stumbles or falls down…

It was a good decision of him that he had fallen – I held the camera for him in the right direction so that he could get up and continue. We always behave in the right way, always. The “system of filmmakers” would force me to stop everything and start once again, but I really don’t care. I care about Karel and his fall and my own behaviour from that moment on.

So, you do not think about the aesthetics much in advance?

In painting you do gestures. My brother was great in that. Just a brush stroke, no overthinking. You do what you’re supposed to do. Other painters think about their compositions and do a precise technical work. So, that is possible as well as we can see in Mondrian, for example.

You are the first type of person?

I am both, actually. The truth is, though, that I am more of the person who tends to think about everything than the one who can do many things of their own accord. This is what sets me apart from my siblings. I need to go through everything in advance; then I can behave like somebody who does not need to think about anything. Maybe I even had to write the Communism script so that I could leave it closed throughout the whole shooting. When I get into the “space” of the emerging film defined in advance, I do what I am supposed to. The basics of my filmmaking can be found in Moravian Hellas – I have been doing everything the same since then. I go somewhere, look for crazy, striking and strange things, and then try to organize those into some thoughts. These thoughts are usually social; I move towards lessening the world miseries. I also try to capture the space of the gnosis to the best extent possible, and I point out those who knew about it. That is why I mention all the book titles in Communism, from Shakespeare to Goethe and Tolstoy. Doing that, I want to show what I’m talking about. Laozi said: “The real Tao is not a Tao at all.” One cannot tell how these things work. They simply appear; some people can manage them, others strive for it their whole life and fail. But their disappointment should not make them stop thinking about how to get out of the cause-and-effect system. Life hurts, and we need to play in a way that would change the chain of causes and effects, make it less terrible. You can be Isaac Newton, for example – you tell people, this is how gravitation works, and bring them a huge relief.

I find it interesting that when you talk about significant people, you also mention Clint Eastwood and Sylvester Stallone. I assume it is not for their roles and stories.

They embody the so-called stars; they move and speak in a way that makes them shine. You notice them, remember them. Stallone is similar to Oldřich Nový or Vladimír Pucholt in Forman’s films.

And why not Arnold Schwarzenegger, for instance?

Because he doesn’t have it in himself. There are classical actors like Rudolf Hrušínský, but those are people I do not consider interesting.

Even Laurence Olivier, for example?

Even Olivier. He played with Marilyn Monroe, who drove him crazy because he couldn’t understand her doings. Monroe was a true star. Olivier was just a big actor. Those can psychologically portray their characters but do not understand the inner light. This is what Zdenka Baldová and Jana Rybářová could do in their films.

You mention children books such as Ferdy the Ant and Heidi but also books by Jaroslav Foglar in the film. Why him?

Those are also those beautiful people who can work with the inner things. Foglar could be a pederast! But no, instead he wrote about boys as the ideal of youth in an absolutely gorgeous way. That’s a miracle. He was old when I shot Bohemia Docta with him, but he was still amazing.

What effect did his books have on you as a child?

I ran with trains inspired by one book of his (editor’s note: The Port is Calling), but I was not that successful in it. Ferda the Ant and Bug Butterfingers, Ondřej Sekora’s characters, are also brilliant – he captured the human order in them. Bug Butterfingers is crazy. He puts a piece of paper on the ground, lets bugs run across it all night, and then he has a building built in accordance with their stomping. Ferda the Ant makes a coach for Gwendolyn and it works! It’s like talking about the rational and the irrational. About gnosis entering the rational world and its fight with it. Ferda would be a typical “Nazi” without Bug Butterfingers, but with him he’s whole. We can’t appreciate our wonderful culture enough. We also have Skupa’s Spejbl and Hurvínek, that’s the same thing. Hurvínek spoils his father’s rules, the causes and the effects, enters into them and disperses them.

Could that also be the case of Věra Chytilová’s film The Inheritance (Dědictví)? Of Polívka starring as Bohouš, who inherits money after the revolution and can throw everybody around him off with his simple existence, similarly to Švejk?

A little bit, but I wouldn’t go that far because when Chytilová talks about the incoming capitalism, she doesn’t mention the outgoing socialism.

I don’t understand.

She doesn’t finish the thought. At that time, we should have maintained our social relationships without this huge capital, without all those people like Babiš.

But she makes fun of it, doesn’t she?

She does but does not say the essential things. She doesn’t say that it’s wrong, only that it’s a little bit wrong. But since we’re talking about her, I admire one scene in her last film (editor’s note: Pleasant Moments /Hezké chvilky bez záruky/) about women confiding in a psychiatrist. The film is annoying, but there is one of the final moments when one of the clients tells the doctor that she was on a boat on the Vltava river and somebody raped her and that she was afraid the president would see her from the Prague Castle. That’s perfect.

What’s the biggest malady of today’s art?

True artists are very rare. To be thorough, we have these filmmakers: Luchino Visconti, Jacques Tati, Charles Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, and also Robert Flaherty. Then there is the sphere of films about that “magical” film art but without humour, i.e. without dissolving the emotions; the magic is wrong. I respect that but am not interested in it. For example, the only interesting thing about Fellini is his wife, the actress Giulietta Masina. She does shine! I don’t like Bergman even though I believed for many years that he’s really good. There’s only a little quality in every kind of art. In music, there’s Bedřich Smetana, then a weaker version in Antonín Dvořák’s music, and then Robert Kurka, nobody else. But those magical things come in tons, that’s for example Janáček or Foerster. I do not let those to myself. These “magical” authors often get more attention than those inner ones, but there’s nothing we can do about it.

How did you and Karel Slach come up with the idea to use the wide-angle lens, that characteristic convex image you employ so often?

Everybody makes films in the given dimensions, with the given focal point, but we don’t. We want to slightly distort the image so that the space is not boring so much. People can enjoy the distortions as a bonus. We don’t want the space in the films to be realistic; this enhances what’s told and what happens in the film.

Your last film is quite a long one, but it is no problem to go through it in one evening. I believe it’s thanks to your work with the rhythm that is present there in several levels. It’s co-determined by camera moves and speech edits when the utterances pervade each other, but you also use loud drums or clapping hands.

You described it well, but the main thing is that is must be funny all the time. The viewers would not last that long if not laughing permanently. Each frame must be a shock, you must be surprised; but each frame is also a funny punchline for the previous one. The film starts with this huge picture in the Strahov Library. My granddaughter in a costume runs into the room and I shout at her: “Don’t stare!” simply because I thought something must happen, finally. And when I need to put an end to something abruptly, I bang the drum and a new story starts immediately. You kick the film up into the air at the beginning and then box throughout it to keep it there. It means that you must create suspense; in other words, to say important thoughts in an outrageous way to keep waking people up and to maintain a simple yet deep foundations. My newest film is essentially about a network that could eliminate representatives from the political system. People could directly influence what is going to happen. And not by voting for representatives who would actually represent mainly themselves once again because they want to keep the position. They spoil everything with that. They lead you to wars and other things. Just imagine German mothers agreeing on building some concentration camps and then letting foreign armies drop bombs on Germany. What normal person would think of buying a horse worth a quarter million for a child? None, that’s the answer. But a capital representative can do that. People think that gathering property is one of our most important activities, but what’d be really important would be to put this property in places where there is someone who could devise something significant. But you don’t put the money there because you need to gather it. You just give away a little bit to look good.

What is your idea of cumulating property in the future?

A painter needs colours and brushes. An IT expert needs loads of electronic devices. Everybody needs something different, at various cost, and you’re supposed to give it to them. That’s the system.

How to protect oneself from blighters?

How to protect oneself from atomic bombs? It’s complicated. Firstly, people must learn in their own places of living, deciding about building a road, a bridge, a bypass. They can vote about that without a mayor.

The advantage of a small village is that everybody knows everybody.

The Internet allows you to meet people and various experts who could help you in the decision-making process. I don’t think it’s unrealistic. It won’t be in fifty years, but I believe it will happen. We don’t go around the world calling people “Your-Well-Born” and performing corvée labour for our feudal lords anymore – this we have been able to eliminate, even though there are still morons going on and on about blue blood. We have achieved certain things, representative democracy and parliament, and the next step will be about bringing democracy closer to people.

How would that work? People have been looking for the ideal system since the ancient times, as described for example by Plato in his Republic.

Plato wanted to educate an elite that would then rule. I spent half of my life working as a labourer and know that I met more interesting people in the factory than among those so-called educated ones. I think people are generally quite smart and decent and capable of making the right choice most of the time. As I say in the film: Zeman got elected and Schwarzenberg lost because people could not vote for a Prince of the Empire; that would go against the idea of a republic.

You do not talk about Václav Havel much. What is your opinion on him in the political and cultural context?

I would say there were two Havels. The one with the first wife who looked after public things, and the one with the second wife. There was an important situation after the revolution: Havel went to Dubček to tell him that he’s not going to be president, and Dubček cried. I would cry too, from not knowing what’s about to happen. I really despise the fact that we have once again become the society of the poor and the rich. I also don’t like that we’re talking about revolution when none happened in fact. Gorbachev and Reagan agreed that the secret services would arrange for our revolution to happen as the last one and in a very cautious way. It’s quite funny. I suppose they were afraid of what the Czechs could think of once again. That’s how I see it, even though people tell me it’s a conspiracy theory. But I don’t think so; Zifčák, the StB agent, pretended he’s dead on the Národní třída line; he was a dummy, and somebody must’ve given him this instruction. I think the secret services took care that the revolution would happen.

Isn’t the Velvet Revolution a great example of how to do it, though? Compared to Romania, for example, where there were lots of blood and executions.

I am happy about it as well, I was demonstrating because I knew the more people would be there the quicker it would happen. But the revolution did not come from the people but from Gorbachev, supplied with weapons by Reagan. He destroyed the Russian economy to the extent that they had to make some changes – and we were one of the nations they left to go free. When our communists asked whether they’re supposed to intervene, the USSR ones said no. One fighter plane would be enough; there would be no Letná demonstration. We must appreciate those who did it and stop pretending to be revolutionists. I think that’s how they perceive Gorbachev in Russia. That’s why they hate him so much. You must also take into account the foul trick played on him by our neighbours in the West. They promised, for example, that the NATO army would not enter the GDR, but they did it anyway. He helped them to make a change and they deliberately removed him, saying: “We won,” and you cannot say that to Russians. Russians saw Mongols, Napoleon, Hitler, and are under the false impression than the bigger Russia is, the easier it’d be for them to get rid of an enemy.

What would you like to do now when the film is done?

There is a book of my older texts, scripts that were not made into films, in preparation. I have this temptation to go through my older films and make a literary extract of the thoughts in them, but I am not sure I’ll have enough energy. I was afraid I would not finish the film, my physical state was that bad.

When did you fall in love with pipe smoking?

I smoked my first pipe when I was 18 years old, as a freshman, in the Hradební Hall residence. That was in 1958. I got dizzy and fell on the floor – I actually fainted! Since then, I’ve been smoking daily, throughout the whole day. I used to think that the human mind needs some excitement, that the neurons work faster and the brain reactions are quicker when you use nicotine! But I’ve had three cancers, so… A friend studying dramaturgy inspired me. I loved watching him pipe smoking. Then he got expelled because he fell in love with this girl and was not able to present any work at school; he was not able to do anything. See how dangerous love can be?

https://www.moderntimes.review/behold-i ... rightened/

Behold, if the river is turbulent he is not frightened

Commentary/essay by Olaf Moller, MAY 12, 2021
DOK.REVUE / Olaf Möller remembers Karel Vachek, who died in December 2020 at the age of 80

The sheer length of his titles often seemed to defeat the curious, of which in truth there never were that many, especially outside his realm which is something different from a country, for the latter changed its shape and bearing while the former (here: an ideal state of mind) remained true to itself, just like Karel Vachek. His realm is Czech culture and history, and their place among the cultures and histories of Europe. His country of birth was the ČSSR which he left when during Normalisation it became too normal to harass, persecute or sequester those with a different Normal on their mind, and to which he returned upon finding out that the rest of the world was alien to his realm – and also, because the Normalisation Normal had changed enough for uneasy comfort and security even if that meant making money as a driver and not an artist. The country that nurtured his main period of film production (despite some active reservations of funding entities…) is the Czech Republic, whose sometimes comical and sometimes tragical attempts at finding an identity that squares different with unchanged, Vachek reported, documented, commented on and reflected upon like no other filmmaker local or foreign ever could let alone dared.

It says a lot about the world not only of cinema that this adventure was widely ignored. When Vachek returned to filmmaking for real and good with New Hyperion or Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood (Nový Hyperion aneb Volnost, rovnost, bratrství; 1992), Part One of his give-or-take 16h adventure Tetralogy The Small Capitalist (Tetralogie Malý kapitalista; 1992-2002), the international movie culture mainstream just turned its interest away from the cinematographies of Central and Eastern Europe to focus on countries like Iran and the People Republic of China, which now got scrutinised and chastised the same way the GDR, ČSSR, USSR etc. had gotten scrutinised and chastised before. This is all very much about claims of cultural superiority – which Vachek often implicitly and sometimes even explicitly ridiculed apropos the Czech Republic’s attempts at playing along and blending in. One could even go so far to say that Vachek’s aesthetic of opposites at play and the importance of the fringes to the centre was a threat to all that which defines this culture of hubris. While Moravian Hellas (Moravská Hellas; 1963) and Elective Affinities (Spřízněni volbou; 1968) are on the surface mighty fine examples of direct cinema, an essayistic edge is already noticeable – come New Hyperion or Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood (Nový Hyperion aneb Volnost, rovnost, bratrství; 1992) this edge becomes the core, with direct cinema being now but one element at play with various others. From New Hyperion on, Vachek strove relentlessly for a balance of extremes which essentially meant combining fly-on-the-wall-, shot-from-the-hip-material with theatrically staged scenes, excursions on mushrooms with hard looks at the politics of the day, FAMU classroom discussions with performance-like monologues by celebrities and nobodies alike, and whatever else might fit in here or there, help elucidate this opaque-seeming point and obfuscate that oh so obvious-sounding line of thought – call it: action collages, pop-up Palais idéaux…! In all that, Vachek is never hectoring or self-righteous, but invariably cheekily self-assured, curious, educated and above all playful – yes: playful, the most dangerous attitude an artist can have these dour days. Thus, he was something contemporary culture knows ever less how to deal with: A liberal bourgeois intellectual whose firm convictions about individual liberties and state responsibilities allows for a freedom of thought that can explore even seemingly dangerous ideas with ease. Authoritarianism has no dominion over citizens like him.