Jan Saudek

Karel Vachek’s graduate film offers us a documentary essay which is both a light-hearted and aggressive little piece and also a parody of investigative film journalism. The Strážnice folk festival, backed by the cultural Party apparatus of the time, for years had little to commend itself to authentic folklore. In the film the event assumes the form of a bizarre stage spectacle with almost surrealistic elements that Vachek reinforces with unconventional approaches (commentary appearing as titles on screen, singing, declamations into the camera, feature etudes, the fusion of news coverage and fiction). The result is a stirring film collage depicting various characters, from crowd-pleasers, Easter egg decorators, kitsch artists and peddlers, to museologists and local residents, all of whom come up against the eccentric "identical” twin reporters Karel and Jan Saudek and a bored actress who appears as an extra. Using their special blend of irony and wit, they present us with the sad truth.

Jan Saudek, Czechoslovakia’s most famous living photographer, is the subject of this often-shocking kaleidoscopic biopic by friend and colleague Adolf Zika. With an unblinking eye, Zika chronicles the drama-filled life and work of a controversial artist who, though little-known in the United States, has enjoyed international acclaim throughout his fifty-year career

A documentary on the photographer Jan Saudek

Deux programmes indépendants sur la photographie : Sans titre (72 min) et I (13 min) / Prague Printemps 1990 (26 min) et L'Image indélébile (55 min). Trois photographes majeurs, Francesca Woodman, Jan Saudek, Joel-Peter Witkin, interrogent nos plus grandes peurs - l'exclusion, la monstruosité, la mort - par leur travail sur la représentation du corps humain. L'aventure artistique aux limites du possible, par sa radicalité, devient plaidoyer pour la différence, appréhension du sacré et quête du sublime.

A labyrinthine portrait of Czech culture on the brink of a new millennium. Egon Bondy prophesies a capitalist inferno, Jim Čert admits to collaborating with the secret police, Jaroslav Foglar can’t find a bottle-opener, and Ivan Diviš makes observations about his own funeral. This is the Czech Republic in the late 90s, as detailed in Karel Vachek’s documentary.

Jan Saudek est un photographe tchèque extraordinaire. Né à Prague en 1935, Saudek cultive le rêve de devenir photographe à l'âge adulte. Autodidacte, viscéralement indépendant et otage du régime communiste, il a travaillé comme photographe pendant des années dans le sous-sol de sa maison, violant énergiquement les normes morales et sociales pour poursuivre sa passion. Par la photographie, il a libéré son délire, ses indignations, ses fétichismes. Ses photographies en noir et blanc (qu'il a commencé à colorier à la main en 1977) sont d'un érotisme grotesque et troublant.

"Situation of the Street" - An experimental study about Czech life, focusing on Prague's National Street, its businesses and the varied people who frequent it.