Kafka

Through the latest within TV-technology we are getting closer to the works of the surreal writer. Franz Kafka (1883-1924), dressed in a black hat and a black suit, is moving in a terrific decor where people and scenes from his life and work are presented. The entire dialogue consists of quotes from Kafka's writings.
The film is an installment from The Audiovisual Encyclopedia, an encyclopedia of our times. Historical people who were in some way pioneers within their fields are presented in a way which resembles a TVseries. One hundred episodes are planned within the project, all narrated by different directors. The Darwin episode, directed by Peter Greenaway, was screened at the Stockholm International Film Festival in 1992.

COMMENTARY
The encyclopedic film shows Kafka as he tends to be portrayed in dictionaries of literary history, although this time in a hightech video version, and it doesn't treat his texts as if they were sacred masterpieces. Against a set which has been designed in a Kafkaesque and claustrophobic way, Rybczynski has recreated a World of Kafka which corresponds well with Kafka's maze-like novels. It is an abstract and unpredictable world where Kafka himself moves between the scenes of his own stories, from America via The Castle to Metamorphosis, and The Trial is of course the frame story throughout. Rybczynski has chosen to portray Josef K as an alter ego. Other charac-
ters become members of his own family, which means that Rybczynski makes a kind of exemplary, depth psychological close reading of his work.
Consumption, black suit and black hat, a decadent 20's world permeated by guilt and shame, sweaty judges, fattish housekeepers and inflated, claustrophobic rooms. This technically very advanced video by Rybczynski is formally interesting and contains a number of appropriate effects. Here the actors dressed in black are meticulously choreographed and speak with somnambulistic preciseness. Kafka's repetitive charactE;r is duplicated, split in two and split again, and in the end it multiplies into an infinite number of Kafka characters. Rybczynski's cool, brilliant presentation is an extensive introduction to Kafka's symbolic language, including his black humor. The only objection is that his world of images may be almost too congenial. ':'
Cecilia Sjöholm

Medverkande
Peter Lucas, Birgit Bofarull: Manus
Zbigniew Rybczynski: Foto
Zbigniew Rybczynski: Musik
Andre Ratay: Talat språk
English