CZECH DOCS SHOWCASE

CRIMSON SAILS
NACHOVE PLACHTY



Miroslav Janek

Country of production: Czech Republic
Year: 2001
Language: Czech
Mins: 80

Production company: CZECH TV, Renata Vlckova, Verbascum
Producers: Renata Vickova, Ondrej Sramek, Richard Nemec
Script: Miroslav Janek
Cinematography: Miroslav Janek
Editing: Tonicka Jankova
Music: Martin Smolka, Pjotr Leshenko

Source: Verbascum, s.r.o.
Richard Nimec
Eerna 6,
110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic
Tel: +420 224 930 077
Fax: +420 224 930 384
e-mail: verbascum@email.cz


Czech helmer Miroslav Janek offers an artistic-poetic documentary about a floating theatrical performance by the Forman brothers (sons of director Milos Forman) with Cabaret Theater Dromesko from a literary text by a Russian writer and adventurer Alexander Grin. The original performance took place on a riverboat that toured several European ports. This inventive film chronicles the mounting of the unique theater event, showing a variety of art and craft forms united under the idea of “sowing“ the esoteric atmosphere of artistic creation and poetry to make the dream of landlubbers about the sea come true. The ship sails on and Grin’s words touch the waves...“One morning a crimson sail will gleam in the sun on the far horizon. The shimmering pile of crimson sails on a white ship will head straight towards you, cutting through the waves...”

Miroslav Janek (b. 1954, Nachod, Czechoslovakia emigrated to the U.S. in 1980 where he taught filmmaking at Film in the Cities in Minnesota and worked with a variety of documentary filmmakers (e.g. Godfrey Reggio – co-editing and editing Powaqqatsi, Anima Mundi and Naqoyqatsi). He returned to Czech Republic in the mid-Nineties, finding great success with The Unseen (1997), a movie about photographing blind children. His extensive filmography includes: Seven Ten Nectiny (1993), Kralik and His Guests (1995), Baroque Opera (1997), Hamsa, I Am (1999) and Musicians (1999) and Crimson Sails (2001). In 2000, together with Roman Vavra and Vit Janecek, he wrote and directed the feature-length documentary Battle for Life.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6, 2005 AT 7.15 PM. / FACET CINEMATHEQUE