Kinetopsia
The young couple lives across the street from the shuttered Discoland Sylvia that became famous in the early 90s as a meeting place for the business, cultural and political elite and the criminal underworld. A building personified by its co-owner, the mythical Ivan Jonák. But the couple is too young to remember this time. The accidental discovery of an old shilling note awakens their interest in the disco building. They enter the abandoned place several times, where they find relics of the early 90s. Uncovered history leads them to reflect on today’s Czech reality influenced by the events of the socio-economic transformation. Finally they visit the mystery site at night and to their surprise find a community of dancing 50-somethings “fighting against the communists”. Just as Jonak wished.
The term kinetopsia refers to a disorder which makes us think that stationary objects are in motion. The title thus presents a metaphor for our situation: the Revolution took place more than three decades ago, and while an uncertain present brings ever new problems, public discussion still often chases after the “spectre of communism” – a universal, abstracted evil, always blameworthy and constantly threatening to return. Its shadow makes it easier to miss the real challenges of today, as well as critical aspects of the political transformation that has wrought our economic and cultural conditions.
The project thus hyperbolically takes on the “90s” businessman and gangster icon Ivan Jonák, in whom the often overlooked (personal) continuity of (pre)revolutionary and post-revolutionary events is well demonstrated. However, it approaches the topic in an entertaining, almost thriller-style fashion. For the young protagonists, already born into a free state and dealing with quite different problems, Jonák’s story becomes a detective case to untangle. Their final, surreal clash with the former revolutionary generation “fighting the communists,” in the ruins of what was Discoland, thus stands as a symbolic encounter with an isolated worldview that remains, while clearly absurd, one we have yet to confront.
The failure to identify the real culprits of many problems is not limited to Czech Republic but applies to a number of post-socialist countries where their own “Jonáks”, acting under the guise of revolution, have managed to enrich themselves at the expense of others, often finding comfortable posts in the emerging system. The need to rethink the black-and-white perspective of our (post-)revolutionary history thus extends far beyond Discoland, and without such a negotiation we can hardly expect to address the current issues at stake.
Text Noemi Purkrábková
DIRECTOR Tomáš Svoboda
SCRIPT Tomáš Svoboda
D.O.P. Michal Černý
EDITOR Jaromír Pesr
SOUND DESIGN Sara Pinheiro
MUSIC Jaroslav Šlauf
PRODUCER Jordi Niubó
COSTUME DESIGN Josefína Bakošová
i/o post production, grading, online, VFX, DCP mastering
CAST Samuel Toman, Marie-Luiza Purkrábková, Pavel Lagner
supported by Czech Film Fund
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