There are movies and there are good films, I prefer – you could never suspect! – the good one. Then Peter Zelenka is one of my favorites, he is no doubt from those who are talented enough to make good films and not only.
Here is an interview with Peter Zelenka taken by Jana Klenhova (Prague), 15 November 2006 . I’ve found it on a good resurse www.artmargins.com, then as a Peter Zelenka’s great fan and admirer I decided to place some of his quotes here just for remembrance despite Mr.Zelenka said about my favorite writer Milan Kundera as about “idiot”:-) Anyway. But firstly Petr Zelenka’s fylmography:
Karamazovi
Crew: Director, Screenwriter
Actors: Ivan Trojan, Igor Chmela, Martin Mysicka, David Novotny, Radek Holub
Wrong Side Up
Crew: Director, Play Author, Screenwriter
Actors: Ivan Trojan, Zuzana Sulajova, Nina Diviskova, Miroslav Krobot, Zuzana Bydzovská
Rok Dabla
Crew: Director, Screenwriter
Actors: Jarek Nohavica, Karel Pilhal, Jan Prent, Karel Holas, Frantisek Cerny
3 Erotic Tales
Crew: Director, Screenwriter
Actors: Victor Argo, Austin Pendleton, Valerie Geffner, Ivan Trojan, Tomas Pavelka
Samotari
Crew: Screenwriter
Actors: Labina Mitevska
owers
Crew: Director
Synopsis: Part of Regina Ziegler’s Erotic Tales series, the short film Powers is directed by Czech filmmaker Petr Zelenka. Peter Válek (Ivan Trojan) is a performing magician at a successful Prague nightclub. However, things start to go wrong in his act when he discovers that he possesses supernatural Read More
2000
Knoflikari
Crew: Director, Screenwriter
Actors: Jiri Kodet, Borivoj Navratil, Rudolf Hrusínsky, Jr., Eva Holubova, Vladimir Dlouhy
Synopsis: This Czech anthology film has six episodes linked by a radio show and a common theme of chance, coincidence, and fate — opening in 1945 Japan with “Kokura Lucky” (Kokura residents complain about the poor weather, unaware it has just caused the Enola Gay overhead to change targets)
A theatre play named Teremin, written and directed by popular Czech film scriptwriter Peter Zelenka, has become the high-profile event of the last theatre season in Prague. The plot line was inspired by the fascinating story of Lev Sergeevich Termen (1896 – 1993), a Russian acoustical engineer and inventor of the first widely accepted high-frequency electronic instrument and the first instrument that could be played without being touched — by moving the hands in the space between two antennae, which control intonation and volume. Originally called Aetherophon, later renamed after the French version of the inventor’s name, the „theremin“ was invented around 1919 at the Moscow GIMN , the State Institute of Musical Studies, in a special department for the so called auto-musical instruments where new technologies for producing sound were developed and new instruments constructed in the far pre-electronic period. Termen became the forefather of synthesized electronic music and the leading persona of a new era of sound production and modification with the help of electric energy. The otherworldly sound of teremin was later used in numerous sci-fi and suspense films, such as Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945).
Termen‘s biography is paved with the milestones of 20th century history; he presents his instrument to Lenin in 1922, sets out on a tour around Russia in the time of the Great Famine to promote electrification, lives in New York during the Great Depression where he cooperates with Joseph Shillinger, meets Albert Einstein and marries a young Afro-American ballet dancer. He is forced to return to the Soviet Union in 1938 and, surviving Stalin’s purges, he comes back to New York several decades later – in his 90’s – to continue to raise awareness of the analogue electronic music.
Zelenka’s rather aesthetically conservative drama with detective overtones is set between 1928-1938 – the years that Termen spent in New York. The play premiered in Dejvicke theatre in November 2005, and was soon after nominated for the Alfred Radok Prize 2005 and translated into English and Russian. The Russian production of Teremin will be staged by Russian director Sergei Fedotov in April 2006 in Perm (Ural). Zelenka has obtained two functional replicas of a theremin for the Prague production from a small American company that manufactures the instrument in North Carolina. He will also assist Fedotov in acquiring the instrument – the key protagonist of the play. The English version, prepared by the author in cooperation with Jodie Marshall, a young British dramatist, will be presented at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds at a reading on May 13th, 2006.
Jana Klenhova: The story of Lev Termen and his inventions is fascinating not only from a political and musical or acoustical point of view, but also from a historical one – as a particular human fate that bears witness to the history of the 20th century. What aspects of Termen’s story were most appealing to you?
Peter Zelenka: Precisely that particular human fate.
J.K.: Your play shows that you have studied the inventor’s biography as well as the principles that form the base of his groundbreaking invention very thoroughly. The play contains numerous in-depth scientific explanations on one hand; on the other hand it interprets a number of ambiguous historical issues very freely. What function does the excess of stylized scientific information have in the play? Can it be understood as a way of aestheticizing science or scientific language?
P.Z.: I will leave this judgment to you as a spectator. I personally am fascinated by the valve (the electric bulb) and I have tried to outline for the audience the circumstances under which it was invented. I am not aware of any other scientific information in the play.
J.K.: The act of playing non-contact teremin is very charming also from the visual point of view, in terms of movement. This aspect seems to be rather reduced in the play, as if the excess of explication and information detracted the space for theatricality, for visual effects potentially contained in a dramatization of Termen’s story and the story of the instrument. Was it on purpose? How and why did you decide for this sort of imbalance (of verbal and visual communication)?
P.Z.: You will have to go to Russia in order to see a concert of teremin played by Lydia Kavina. As I have said already, we are speaking about a theatre play. You haven’t been to the theatre for a long time, have you? What visual effects do you have in mind in Dejvicke theatre? Laterna magika? That is impossible, unfortunately. Not that it was our intention anyway.
J.K.: The play was premiered on the 17th of November, as you have said, it is also a play about freedom. Did you choose the date of the premiere accordingly?
P.Z.: The dates of premieres are usually determined by the schedules of the guest actors. That is what happened in our case too.
