00:12Welcome back to the 45th edition of Le Giornati del Cinema Muto, the Pordenone Salon Film Festival.
00:18I'm standing on the top floor of the Teatro Verdi.
00:21From here, all this light, you can also see the mountains.
00:24People tend to forget Pordenone is in shooting distance of some really spectacular scenery, some spectacular mountains.
00:32Today, we are looking at Czech avant-garde cinema.
00:35For several years now, we've been trying to do at least one focus per year on avant-garde cinema.
00:40It forms such an important part of the creativity of this moment in time.
00:44We've given a carte blanche to our friends at the Czech National Archive who've done a remarkable job in restoring
00:51and recovering so many films that are often in difficult formats.
00:56So we have to also keep that in mind. Many of these were shot on 16, compromised conditions, but you
01:01won't really notice with the films that we're screening today.
01:04The first one, Prague in the Glow of Lights, is a 1928 promotional film, actually, for the electric company of
01:12Prague.
01:13And it's a perfect example of that moment in history in the late 20s, even in the mid 20s, when
01:20the excitement of technology has taken hold and a sense of optimism, which is so strong now.
01:27So it's a film that's looking at the city as electricity has arrived, as a city, even in the evening,
01:34can glow with light.
01:36Remember that in 1928, almost anyone who will be watching this film, who would have been watching this film at
01:40that time, would have very clear memories of a city that was much more in darkness.
01:44And you think about what was possible by the arrival of electricity, also the arrival of motion, of trams and
01:51trains, automated vehicles.
01:53One of the interesting things about Prague in the Glow of Lights is one of the cameramen is Václav Víc,
01:59who became one of the most prominent cameramen, not just in the Czech Republic.
02:03He, by the way, shot Gustav Machetti's Eroticon, but also came to Italy.
02:08He's the chief cinematographer for Alessandro Blasetti's La Corone di Ferro.
02:13He worked with Silvana Pampanini, with Gino Cervi, Vittorio de Sica, Alida Valli, all of the greats.
02:20So he's a name that's still very much a part of the Italian film history.
02:27After that, we have another film which also enters into film history in quite a surprising way, perhaps.
02:33It's called Aimless Walk.
02:34This is from 1930 by a director named Alexander Hackenschmid.
02:37And it's a film that captures a kind of existential crisis of a man who's walking from the city into
02:43the countryside.
02:44We don't really know what it is, what this malaise is of his, but you feel it in how the
02:50film is shot, how the film is framed.
02:54And Hackenschmid is a name you might be familiar with because he, when he moved to the United States sometime
03:00later, he married Maya Deren.
03:02And he is indeed the co-director of Meshes of the Afternoon.
03:06So a name that you probably know, but maybe don't always connect with Maya Deren, but indeed they were husband
03:12and wife for some time.
03:13Following Aimless Walk, we have another promotional film, Money is the Blood of the Economic Organism.
03:19What an amazing title.
03:20And this too was a promotional film, believe it or not, for a bank.
03:25It's wonderful to think that even banks were hiring basically experimental filmmakers to promote their wares, so to speak.
03:35It's beautifully shot, as you'll see, and really quite, quite fun.
03:39And again, this goes back to that sense of movement.
03:41You'll see very much all those rolling coins.
03:45It's a delight to see.
03:47Following that, The Soldier's Story, we're in 1935.
03:51War is brewing.
03:52It really is.
03:53It's very different.
03:54It's a very different world from 1928 at this point.
03:56And it's a film about a soldier who's thinking about what might happen should he be recruited and should there
04:02be a war.
04:02The final short in this program is Hands on Tuesday, another film from 1935, but very, very different from The
04:09Soldier's Story.
04:10When we were thinking about how to put these films together and what order to screen them, we decided to
04:16do them chronologically, which made sense in a way, if anything makes sense at all.
04:19It's very difficult, of course, with avant-garde films to know exactly how to program it.
04:23But in this case, it was necessary that we had to end, of course, on a lighter note.
04:27And it's a delightful film that is shot just using details, just using hands to tell a story.
04:34And it's not that this is the first time that that's been done.
04:36There were even films in like 1908, 1909 that were just shot using feet, for example, or hands.
04:45Remember, this is a cauldron of creativity that's happening in the film world at this point.
04:50But even continuing now, as late as 1935, it's lovely to see avant-garde filmmakers revisiting this idea to see
04:57what emotions that you can derive, what cleverness, what humor you can get just with close-ups, no faces at
05:05all.
05:05It's a charmer.
05:07I know you will enjoy it.
05:08And certainly you'll be enjoying the accompaniment of Dan van den Hork.
05:12See you soon.
05:13Bye.
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05:24Grazie a tutti
