FRANZ KAFKA ZNÁMÝ NEZNÁMÝ

In the tourist hotspots of Prague city centre, you can buy Kafka T-shirts and Kafka mugs. The portrait of one the city's most famous sons and author of The Metamorphosis always looks rather melancholic and thus seems to confirm his image as a morbid genius. According to literary scholar Reiner Stach, much of what we think we know about Kafka is pure legend however. Fellow Kafka experts join him in debunking Kafka clichés in this documentary in which the "Kafka myth" is dusted off and subjected to scrutiny: which biographical details are true, which have become legend, and have accounts of his life been coloured by "fake news“? Though Kafka suffered professionally as an insurance lawyer and had problems with his authoritarian father, in private he was quite a cheerful, sporty and sociable individual. He himself viewed certain of his stories which were interpreted as particularly dark as tragicomic. This Flaubert devotee was downright obsessed with writing, his only calling. Drawing on excerpts from newsreels, photos and documents from the time, the film reveals new facets of Kafka as a private individual. And also highlights his unfinished novel The Castle as central to the author’s oeuvre, incorporates excerpts from the 1968 film adaptation with Maximilian Schell and sets off in search of the places and buildings that influenced the work.

Text: Kira Taszman

06.11.2024 | 10:00 | Glad-House (original version with English subtitles + simultaneous translation into German), FSK0