It tells the powerful and contradictory story of a progressive artist, experimenter and later banned prominent communist who was almost erased from official memory. The film was created over five years as a collaboration between renowned creators from the fields of film, theater and music. AGAINST the Czech festival premiere was shown on October 27 at the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, where he won in the competition section Czech joy. It heads to theaters on December 14.

The full-length sung film, combining elements of contemporary opera, musical, documentary and staged reconstruction, has already achieved a number of successes abroad. He was selected for the prestigious Burning Lights competition in the Swiss Vision du Reél and in a number of other international festivals (Dok.München, See the Sound Cologne, Bildrausch Film Fest Basel, Reykjavík IFF, Czech and Slovak Film Fest Australia, Sofia Documental IFF) and at the international won the Golden Heynal award for the best music documentary at the Krakow Film Festival in June of this year.

Director and screenwriter Lucia Králova with librettist, theater and opera director Jiří Adamek/Austerlitz and composer Petra Šuško they reconstructed Kapr’s life on the basis of his previously unpublished private music, film and written archive and transpose it into a contemporary operatic composition that offers an unusual audiovisual experience full of unexpected twists and humor. Kapr’s story is sung by members of the internationally recognized Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno with a soloist Karl Jakubů (Jan Kapr) and choirmaster and composer Peter Fialawho is the last living pupil of Jan Kapr.

With Lucía Králova FI editor Zuzanapková:

You can listen to other interesting facts about the film Lucie Králové in the program Music in the Millennium, in which Lucie Králová was the guest of Ondřej Fischer. The premiere of the show is set for Tuesday, January 3 at 7:00 p.m., you will be able to listen to repeats on Friday, January 6 at 10:00 p.m. and Saturday, January 7 at 11:00 a.m.

John Kapr became so famous for his propaganda music in the 1950s that he was awarded one of the highest honors of the Eastern Bloc at the time, the Stalin Prize. But he returned here in August 1968 in response to the Russian invasion, after which he was banned for life from displaying his works. An extensive private archive was preserved after him, in addition to special film material, which Kapr often conceived as short live sketches in which he cast himself and his loved ones, it includes dozens of chamber music scores and ten symphonies and years of unopened boxes of love and political correspondence. “We have translated these never-before-published materials into an opera libretto that brings to life the turning points of personal, creative and political moments in Kapro’s life, while interpreting this iconic story of the 20th century from contemporary perspectives.” explains director and screenwriter Lucie Králová. For example, the singers sing over the letters that Kapr addressed to President Zápotocki to help his friend, the legendary singer RA Dvorský from the communist criminal at the time, or acknowledge blank spaces in the composer’s legacy. The film thus becomes not only an unconventional biography filled with Kapra’s quirky humor, but also a more general statement about the nature of memory and the ability of the film medium to preserve the living after their death. At the same time, he asks himself how to decipher today’s ambivalent legacy of man without superficial judgments and how to understand man’s desire to make his mark on eternity. Thus, instead of listening to experts’ statements about the portrayed artist, the audience can directly enter Kapro’s universe, formed by an ingenious composition of refined opera choreographies and raw scenes from his films. And let yourself be surrounded by elaborate spatial sound design, inspired by Kapra’s compositional encryption method. KaprKód is a playful and dramatic cipher in which Jan Kapr, more than thirty years after his death, sounds his own silent films and becomes – as the composer of his own life – a co-author of the film. “The past is never final. Even Kapro’s heroic gesture from August 1968, when in response to the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia he returned the Stalin Prize in the form of an open letter to his friend Shostakovich, unfortunately still seems relevant in the light of current Russian aggression.” adds Lucie Králová.

The ceremonial premiere, which will begin the distribution of the film in Czech cinemas, is planned for December 14, 2022 at the Lucerna cinema. Finally, the film will also be presented in the form of special events with concerts and debates with the creators. KaprKód will enter Slovak distribution in the spring of next year.

Lucia Králova is a director, screenwriter, teacher at FAMU and the author of a number of documentaries presented and awarded at domestic and foreign festivals. Three times she won the prize for the best Czech documentary at the MFDF Jihlava (Ominous dítě, 2003 and Prodáno, 2005, KaprKód, 2022), her feature debut Lost Vacation (2007) was awarded the Crystal Globe for the best documentary at the Karlovy Vary IFF. As a dramaturgist, she collaborated on e.g. concretely in the network, Alchymická pec, The World According to Daliborek, The Law of Helena, The Locked World. She wrote the book Rozumět televize (NAMU, 2022), which is a look into the inner life and institutional mechanisms of Czech Television, which influences the production of documentary films.

Photo © Silvie Marková