Kafka
Documentary
Kafka Goes to the Movies
(Dir. Hanns Zischler, 2002)
Hardge Forum, Multicultural Center,
74 Lower College Road, Kingston, RI 02881
Nov. 13 (4pm)
Register here.
Kafka Goes to the Movies
(Dir. Hanns Zischler, 2002)
Hardge Forum, Multicultural Center,
74 Lower College Road, Kingston, RI 02881
Nov. 13 (4pm)
Register here.
Experimental documentary, with an introduction by Professor Claire Ross
Directed by Hanns Zischler
Germany, 2002
DVD, 55 min.
While working on a television film project about Franz Kafka, the German actor Hanns Zischler discovered a series of passionate notes in Kafka's diaries about his visits to the cinema. Zischler, who also authored a book of the same title, spent the next twenty-five years scouring archives and libraries to locate many of the now-vanished films Kafka mentioned in his diaries. The result is a witty speculation on the writer's fascination with the cinematic and Zischler's fascination with Kafka. "Kafka Goes to the Movies" is dedicated to the numerous attempts to adapt Kafka's work for a film format, examining the relationship, imaginary or real, between the celebrated writer and a revolutionary new medium of film.
Text: Goethe-Institut, Montreal
Read more about Kafka's love of the cinema here!
"I usually know almost all the weekly programs of all the cinematographs by heart. My distraction, my need for entertainment, drinks its fill from the posters. In front of the posters, I get respite from my habitual, almost deep-seated unease, from this feeling of the eternally provisional, whenever I returned to the city from the summer vacations that ultimately proved to be unsatisfying after all, I had a craving for the posters and for the electric tram on which I rode home, read off the posters, in fragments, straining as we passed them by."
Letter to Felice Bauer, March 1913 (trs. Zischler)
„[Ich weiß] doch meistens fast alle Wochenprogramme aller Kinematographen auswendig. Meine Zerstreutheit, mein Vergnügungsbedürfnis sättigt sich an den Plakaten von meinem gewöhnlichen innerlichsten Unbehagen, von diesem Gefühl des ewig Provisorischen ruhe ich mich vor den Plakaten aus, immer wenn ich von den Sommerfrischen, die ja schließlich doch unbefriedigend ausgegangen waren, in die Stadt zurückkam, hatte ich eine Gier nach den Plakaten und von der Elektrischen, mit der ich nachhause fuhr, las ich im Fluge, bruchstückweise, angestrengt die Plakate ab, an denen wir vorüberfuhren.“
Brief an Felice Bauer, März 1913