A poetic documentary about Franz Kafka's love of cinema
Dir. Hanns Zischler
Germany, 2002
DVD, 55 min
2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the death of writer Franz Kafka. As we kick off a months-long celebration of Kafka's life and work, join us for a screening of
Kafka Goes to the Movies, with a special introduction by Ondrej Pometlo, Deputy Consul General of the Czech Republic in Chicago.
© edition filmmuseum
While working on a television movie project about Franz Kafka, German actor Hanns Zischler discovered a series of passionate writings in Kafka’s journals about his own moviegoing. Zischler, who also wrote a book of the same title, spent the next twenty-five years combing through archives and libraries to locate many of the now-extinct films cited by Kafka in his journals. The result is a witty conjecture on the writer’s fascination with film and Zischler’s fascination with Kafka.
Kafka Goes to the Movies explores the many attempts to adapt Kafka's writing for the screen and chronicles the relationship, imaginary or genuine, between the acclaimed writer and a revolutionary new medium.
This event is presented in collaboration with the Consulate General of the Czech Republic in Chicago, the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago, and the Masaryk Club at the University of Chicago.
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