Franz Kafka was the author of reference for many central authors of contemporary literature. He was not only one of the most important writers of the 20th century, but also the most influential and original. He died a hundred years ago, but his work seems to have come from the future. He influenced the literature that followed, but also music, cinema and other arts.
With Kafka Goes to the Movies, director Hanns Zischler explains that “in 1978, when I was working on a short film about Kafka, I discovered for the first time in his diary and correspondence notes he had made about the cinema and the films he had seen. (...) their excited, passionate and melancholic tone indicated the vivid emotions Kafka felt at the cinema.” Thus, this essay shows Zischler's research into the writer's relationship with cinema, between Prague, Verona and Paris, mixing images from the time and others from 2002, and meeting personalities who clarify the director's ideas. The screening takes place on November 11, at 6:30 p.m., at Cinema São Jorge, accompanied by a conversation with the director.
We are also presenting Kafka - (un)musical ! (?), a recital with excerpts from Kafka's diaries, some short stories or excerpts from short stories, letters and some scattered poems. Works by Kurtág, Petr Eben, Brahms, Max Brod, Krenek, Bizet, Ligeti and Wagner will be heard. The works by Eben, Brod and Krenek will now have their premiere in Portugal. It will take place at the Auditorium of Liceu Camões, at 6pm on November 12th.
The Trial, by Orson Welles, is based on a dystopian adaptation of Kafka's book of the same name, and follows Joseph K. (Anthony Perkins), an office worker who is arrested and taken to court on charges he will never know about. A critique of totalitarian systems and the oppressive logic of the big Hollywood studios, the film's surreal narrative combined with an expressionist aesthetic, led Orson Welles to consider The Trial the best film of his career, with a screening scheduled for November 12, at 4pm, and a conversation with director Krystian Lupa and Hanns Zischler.
A meeting with Krystian Lupa is also scheduled for the following day, November 13, at 6:30 p.m., at Cinema Nimas. Admission is free to this event, where we will be able to see a long filmed excerpt of his staging of The Trial, and where he will explain in detail the process of researching and staging the play, the difficulties he encountered along the way and how these elements influenced his relationship with Kafka's universe.
Michael Haneke's The Castle (November 13, 9pm, Medeia Nimas Cinema), based on one of Kafka's most disturbing books, plunges us into a universe of discomfort and confusion when a surveyor is asked to work in a village around a castle and has to prove his legitimacy. In turn, Rudolf Noelte's The Castle stands out as the first film adaptation of Kafka's work of the same name. At the same time, it marks the first and only film by the director, whose career was mostly dedicated to television, theater and opera. Rudolf Noelte's work stands out for its pessimistic character and grotesque visuals, which capture Kafkaesque surrealism so well. November 13, at 4:30 p.m., at the Medeia Nimas Cinema.
A double bill on November 16, at 9pm, at the Medeia Nimas Cinema, closes this cycle dedicated to Kafka. First, a short film: Jackals and Arabs, by Jean-Marie Straub, which introduces us to a woman in an apartment who claims to be “the oldest jackal”. In this desert, a man from the North asks her to intervene in the conflict between jackals and Arabs. Short and to the point, Jackals and Arabs is an adaptation of Kafka's short story of the same name as a kammerspiel, which Straub transforms into a protest against all forms of hatred. Then, America - Class Relations, also by Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, is adapted from Franz Kafka's unfinished novel, Amerika. This is a novel about a young German bourgeois emigrating to the individualistic and capitalist America of the 1930s and everything in the film's shots, as in Kafka's writing, occupies the space of our attention, as if, at every moment, the world were being seized. At the end, there will be a conversation with Krystian Lupa, Hanns Zischler and Paulo Branco.
LEFFEST not only pays homage to Kafka, but also provokes reflection on the complexities of the human condition and the systems that oppress us. In celebrating this connection, the works on display invite us to revisit and reinterpret the artist's enduring legacy, revealing how his ideas continue to resonate in contemporary times.