Special Screening: Das Leben des Schizophrenen Dichters Alexander März / The Life of the Schizophrenic Poet Alexander März
Scripted by Heinar Kipphardt, who subsequently used the material for a novel and a pay, this highly acclaimed TV production focuses on the life and suffering of the eponymous Alexander März, who, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, spends long periods of his life in a psychiatric institution against which he rebels with small acts of refusal and with poetry. Based on real reports and testimonies, the film is a visceral critique of a repressive psychiatry and of society’s oppression of individuality. Heinar Kipphardt worked in a psychiatric hospital before becoming a leading exponent of the documentary theatre movement in the 1960s, best known for his play In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer (1964).
West Germany 1975; colour, 115 mins. With English subtitles.
Director: Vojtěch Jasný, Script: Heinar Kipphardt
With Ernst Jacobi, Michael Hinz, Rudolf Wessely, Susanne Schaifer, Eva Brumby, Gert Schaefer
This event is part of ‘Hommage to Vojtěch Jasný’, presented by the Made in Prague Festival, 3 – 29 November 2015.
Celebrating the 90th birthday and achievements of an outstanding Czech filmmaker who has had a profound influence on films like Edgar Reitz’s Heimat and Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, the season pays a tribute to his work. Starting with a triple bill of his three Cannes Film Festival winners at the Regent Street Cinema, it presents Jasný’s key films from his 50+ portfolio shot in Czechoslovakia, Austria, West Germany, USA and Canada, demonstrating the width and diversity of his filmmaking and his distinctive auteur flavour, poetic style and spiritual values.
https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/sta/lon/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=20634506
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