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Literature and film
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Thursday, 3 November 2011
| Place |
Pod Baranami Cinema |
| Time |
21:00 |
| Description |
Brothers Quay's films
Introduction: Werner Morlang
Short films inspired by Robert Walser’s works
Stille Nacht I: Dramolet
1988, 1'
The Comb
1990, 17'
Tales From The Vienna Woods
1992, 3'
Benjament Institute
A film adaptation of Robert Walser’s novel Jakob von Gunten.
United Kingdom 1995, 104m'
Jakob von Gunten, descendant of an aristocratic family, enrols at the Benjament Institute to become a servant. The owners of the school are Johannes Benjament and his sister Lisa. During the lessons, a group of superannuated students practice elegant bows and expressions, fold napkins, clean cutlery and carry buckets of water. Von Gunten, observing others with curiosity, learns the dark secrets of the facility. He soon perceives a sexual interest from Johannes, who lives in an incestuous relationship with his sister. However, beautiful Lisa and top student Kraus also seek to win his affection. Jakob's appearance accelerates the long-progressing process of decadence at the Institute... The script was based on the novel Jakob von Gunten (1908) by Robert Walser, an eminent Swiss writer, and the film gained a special award at the Locarno Festival.
Free entrance card to be collected at the cinema box office on the day of the screening.
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Friday, 4 November 2011
| Place |
Pod Baranami Cinema |
| Time |
21:00 |
| Description |
Film: Branca de Neve
(Snow White, 2000)
Directed by: João César Monteiro
Introduction: Reto Sorg
Experimental film based on Snow White by Walser. "Instead of looking, I prefer to listen," says one character to another in cult Swiss author Robert Walser’s drama which provides the fitting source for this ground-breaking adaptation. Beginning with photographs of Walser (who spent most of his years in a mental asylum, and is best known for the influential Surrealist work Institute Benjamenta) lying dead in the alpine snow, Snow White quickly abandons image entirely, or at least the traditional version of it, and instead uses words alone to create vision. A fade to black that lasts the entire film, interspersed with sudden shots of clouds floating across a blue sky, accompany a series of actors voicing the entire story. Snow White poses the questions "Do pictures negate the intensity of vision? Does one see more clearly, when one has only words to see?" Challenging, radical, and essential.
Free entrance card to be collected at the cinema box office on the day of the screening.
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Saturday, 5 November 2011
| Place |
Pod Baranami Cinema |
| Time |
21:00 |
| Description |
Film: Der Vormund und sein Dichter
(The Guardian and His Poet, 1978)
Directed by: Percy Adlon
Introduction: Susan Bernofsky
This movie shows the true story of an unusual friendship between the Swiss author Robert Walser (now considered as one of the most important German language writers of the 20th century), and the Zurich critic, editor and patron of art, Carl Seelig. Born in Biel on April 15, 1878, Walser, as a poet almost completely forgotten by the outer world, spends the period from 1933 to 1956 as a chronic schizophrenic in the Appenzell – Ausserrhoden mental home in Herisau, Switzerland. From 1936 on, Carl Seelig visits the poet two or three times a year to go on a day's walk. In 1940, Seelig, without Walser's knowledge, becomes the latter's guardian. The friendship lasts until the writer's death in the year 1956.
Free entrance card to be collected at the cinema box office on the day of the screening.
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