Prague

Prague ①

Our first stop in Prague was the Karel Zeman Museum (Muzeum Karla Zemana). Karel Zeman is one of the grand masters of Czech animation, renowned for his seamless blend of live-action, animation, and special effects.

Inside, each exhibition room is styled like a film studio, featuring small individual set pieces. One set in particular—from his film Invention for Destruction (Vynález zkázy)—utterly captured our hearts.

Every mechanical component inside the pirates' submarine—from the control levers and periscopes to the massive gears, cylinders, and valves—is painted in fine stripes to emulate the uniform, non-shaded lines characteristic of wood engraving. Even the actors’ costumes and props were patterned with identical stripes for the shoot, so the live-action actors look as if they’re moving right inside a printed woodcut illustration. Just so much fun!

In 1958, Czechoslovakia was under a Communist regime where state censors and political persecution of cultural activities were part of daily life. What was Zeman thinking as he crafted such a wonderfully playful world in Invention for Destruction? Incidentally, the film gained immense acclaim both at home and abroad—receiving full support from the Communist regime while winning numerous awards in Western nations—and is sometimes described as the most successful film in Czech cinema history.

Prague ②

After fully enjoying the Karel Zeman Museum (Muzeum Karla Zemana), we visited the Franz Kafka Museum (Muzeum Franze Kafky). We are immensely fond of Kafka’s short story A Crossbreed (Eine Kreuzung).

Inside, the lighting is kept quite dim, creating a distinctly atmospheric space. Kafka’s manuscripts, letters, diaries, first editions, photographs, and old newspaper clippings are meticulously arranged throughout the shadowy rooms—giving the impression less of an archival display and more of a set for a mystery film or show.

In the basement gallery sat a model of the execution apparatus from In the Penal Colony (In der Strafkolonie). This execution machine—a fictional creation, of course—is an intricately horror-inducing mechanism that slays the condemned only after twelve long hours of carving their sentence directly into their flesh with needles.

What makes this machine particularly remarkable is that it functions as a device designed to rationally render visible "that which can only be seen over an extended period of time." We aspire to create narrative apparatuses that embody this very idea.

An apparatus is an ideology.

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