ZDENĚK LIŠKA, COMPOSER AND CO-AUTEUR EXTRAORDINAIRE

Beginning with advertisements and short films for the Baťa shoe corporation, Zdeněk Liška (1922–1983) was a massively prolific composer who turned his formidable, Prague Conservatory-cultivated talents almost exclusively to scoring films. At once a classicist and a tireless avant-gardist who developed his own techniques to synthesise musique concrète sound design with his scores, Liška made a profound sonic-cum-dramaturgical contribution to the cinema of Czechoslovakia, peaking during its “Golden Sixties”. Jan Švankmajer observed that Liška “was able to discover rhythms that even directors weren’t aware of”; often composing at an editing table, he would sometimes recut films to produce a more integrated, rhythmic synthesis of sound and vision. This digital restoration-packed season highlights a different dimension of Liška’s genius each week. Week one gives prominence to his gift for eerie choral scores across Švankmajer’s unsettling 1968 short, The Flat, Juraj Herz’s horror classic, The Cremator (1969), and František Vláčil’s mediaeval thriller The Valley of the Bees (1968). Week two homes in on his passion for brass and regional folk music across Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos’ Oscar-winning The Shop on the High Street (1965) and Elo Havetta’s ebullient Celebration in the Botanical Garden (1969). The season closes with a focus on Liška’s experimental electronic work for animation and science fiction in Karel Zeman’s ingenious The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962) and Jindřich Polák’s hugely influential Ikarie XB-1 (1963), via a beautiful Hermína Týrlová short, The Snowman (1966), before culminating in Pavel Klusák’s insightful 2017 documentary Music by Zdeněk Liška, a significant contribution to the long overdue upsurge in interest in this extraordinary composer’s work.

Presented in partnership with the Czech and Slovak Film Festival of Australia.

Wednesday 23 September

7:00pm THE CREMATOR

Juraj Herz (1968) 102 mins – Unclassified 15+

Karl Kopfrkingl, chillingly portrayed by Rudolf Hrušínský, is a crematorium operator wooed by Nazism in the early days of the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Production of Herz’s adaptation of Ladislav Fuks’ 1967 novel was interrupted by the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion, further charging its already potent political undertones with an added horror and complementing Stanislav Milota’s virtuoso expressionist cinematography and Liška’s indelible orchestral and choral score, featuring soprano Vlasta Soumarová-Mlejnková (also heard in František Vláčil’s Marketa Lazarová). Preceded by The Flat Jan Švankmajer (1968) 13 mins – Unclassified 15+. A dingy apartment revolts against a man who stumbles into it. Liška’s score raises the tension. With Juraj Herz. 4K DCP.

4K DCP of The Cremator courtesy of the National Film Archive in Prague.

CTEQ ANNOTATION
The Cremator
by Brian Hoyle

9:15pm THE VALLEY OF THE BEES

František Vláčil (1968) 97 mins – Unclassified 15+

In Vláčil’s engrossing follow-up to Marketa Lazarová, designed to reuse that unprecedentedly expensive film’s props and costumes, two Teutonic Knights of the Cross grapple with internal conflicts and one another, as one is charged with returning the other to the fold. Written with Vladimír Körner (Vláčil’s collaborator on later films including Adelheid), the film’s thematic contestation of dogmatism – notwithstanding that it is set in the 13th century – proved controversial after the quashing of the Prague Spring. More recently, queer readings have proliferated. Liška deploys choirs of stylised human voices to haunting effect throughout.

4K DCP courtesy of the National Film Archive in Prague.

Wednesday 30 September

7:00pm THE SHOP ON THE HIGH STREET

Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos (1965) 125 mins – Unclassified 15+

With Slovakia made a puppet fascist state during World War II, a milquetoast carpenter (Jozef Kroner) is ordered to participate in the “Aryanisation” of his small hometown. However, he comes to care for the stubborn, confused Jewish widow (the formidable Ida Kamińska) whose button shop he is forced to run. Kadár and Klos’ serio-comic masterpiece about the perils of conformism won the 1966 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and features one of Liška’s loveliest, brassiest soundtracks. Later released by Mainstream Records in the United States, it remains one of the small number of his scores to have been released independently of a film.

4K DCP courtesy of the National Film Archive in Prague.

9:20pm CELEBRATION IN THE BOTANICAL GARDEN

Elo Havetta (1969) 83 mins – Unclassified 15+

Called the “Bruegel of Slovak film” by Václav Macek, brilliant New Wave director Havetta – FAMU professor Karel Kachyňa considered him his most talented student – made only two rambunctious features before dying at the age of 37. Inspired by French Impressionism, Slovak folk art, the commedia dell’arte and silent cinema, Havetta’s feature debut is a riotous bacchanale made against the grim backdrop of the summer of 1968 – the Warsaw Pact invasion occurred during filming. Pierre (Slavoj Urban), a wanderer from France, brings new life to a Carpathian village, sparking episodes of manic exuberance and cinematic invention, with one of Liška’s most euphoric scores rollicking along throughout.

2K DCP courtesy of the Slovak Film Institute.

Wednesday 7 October

7:00pm THE FABULOUS BARON MUNCHAUSEN

Karel Zeman (1962) 85 mins – Unclassified 15+

Inspired by Gustave Doré’s engravings in the 1862 edition of Gottfried August Bürger’s book, Zeman’s peerless adaptation is a witty and beautiful succession of colour-tinted marvels of trick photography. Seamlessly melding live action with cut-out and other forms of animation, it sits in perfect alignment with the grand whimsy of the famed baron’s (Miloš Kopecký) quicksilver flights of fancy. Liška’s soundtrack, rich in electroacoustic experimentation, equal parts diegetic sound effects and incidental music, ranks among his most innovative and playful.

4K DCP.

CTEQ ANNOTATION
Fly Me to the Moon: Love and Lunacy in The Outrageous Baron Munchausen
by Cerise Howard

8:40pm IKARIE XB-1

Jindřich Polák (1963) 86 mins – Unclassified 15+

Adapted from Stanisław Lem’s 1955 novel The Magellanic Cloud, Polák’s landmark ’Scope feature is a clear influence on Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Liška’s extraordinarily innovative score employs manipulated tape loops of orchestral instruments and found sounds to produce a sense of foreboding and evoke the enervating psychological ambience aboard a spaceship peopled by an international crew seeking signs of life in Alpha Centauri. 4K DCP. Preceded by The Snowman Hermína Týrlová 1966 9 mins – Unclassified 15+. Often called “the mother of Czech animation”, Týrlová’s delightful stop-motion wool animation is soundtracked by a striking electroacoustic Liška score.

Both films courtesy of the National Film Archive in Prague.

10:25pm MUSIC BY ZDENĚK LIŠKA

Pavel Klusák (2017) 55 mins – Unclassified 15+

This fascinating documentary made for Czech television features insightful interviews with Juraj Herz, Jan Švankmajer, the Brothers Quay and Finders Keepers Records’ Andy Votel, interspersed with a wonderful array of clips demonstrating Liška’s extraordinary versatility, prolificity and powers of invention.