CZECH DOCS SHOWCASE

THE KEY FOR DETERMINING DWARFS OR THE LAST
TRAVEL OF LEMUEL GULLIVER
KLIC K URCOVANI TRPASLIKU ANEB POSLEDNI CESTA LEMUELA GULLIVERA



Martin Sulik

Country of production: Czech Republic
Year: 2002
Language: Czech
Mins: 58

Production company: Czech Television, Maga
Producers: Cestmir Kopecky, Jan Stern
Script: Jan Lukes, Martin Sulik
Cinematography: Martin Strba
Editing: Jiri Brozek
Music: Peter Graham, Lubos Fiser

Source: Czech Television – Telexport
Kavci hory,
Cz-140 70 Prague 4, Czech Republic
Tel: +420 261 137 432
Fax: +420 261 221 354
e-mail: Kamila.gabrissova@czech-tv.cz


Martin Sulik’s extraordinary film essay portrays Pavel Juracek (1935-1989), the talented 1960s Czech New Wave scriptwriter and director whose three completed films (including Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver saga Case for a Rookie Hangman) were banned and only re-released after his death. In combination with archival footage, Sulik reconstructs episodes from filmmaker’s recently published diaries which offer insightful commentary on the temporary lightening of the cultural-political climate in socialist Czechoslovakia and describe tempestuous reversals in the filmmaker’s private life and his agonizing creative doubts. This outstanding docudrama meditation with Juracek`s son Marek playing the part of his father, deals not only with the fate of one individual, but offers also a portrait of Czechoslovak society before the Soviet invasion of 1968.

Martin Sulik (b. 1962) graduated from Bratislava’s Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (VSMU) in 1986 with the well-received medium-length film Staccato. After making a few documentaries, he debuted in features with the poetic film Tenderness (1991), which immediately ranked him among the most interesting Slovak directors of the younger generation. Sulik strengthened and further developed the lyric-ironic and original visual style of his debut in the highly popular critical successes All I Love (1992), The Garden (1995), Orbis Pictus (1997), Landscape (2000), and City of the Sun or Working Class Heroes (2005).

MONDAY, APRIL 4, 2005 AT 5.30 PM. / GALLERY THEATRE
SCREENING WITH THE JOURNEY: PORTRAIT OF VERA CHYTILOVA