Film Archive

The Gospel According to Brabenec

Documentary Films - Out of Competition 2015 / Evangelium podle Brabence / Czech Republic 2014

Renowned Czech documentarist Miroslav Janek’s latest offering draws on informal interviews that journalist Renata Kalenská conducted with poet, gardener, and current leading figure of the legendary rock band The Plastic People of the Universe, Vratislav Brabenec.

Synopsis

The latest offering from renowned Czech documentarist Miroslav Janek is based on a book of interviews conducted by journalist Renata Kalenská with poet, gardener, and current leading figure of the legendary rock band The Plastic People of the Universe, Vratislav Brabenec. This is no traditional biopic chronologically recounting basic life data, but an attempt to capture the charisma, opinions, and approach to the world of one of the most distinctive figures of the Czech underground. The improvised, highly spontaneous interviews take place during various excursions into the countryside, while visiting Valdice prison and, somewhat symbolically, at a gas station in Mikulov near the Austrian border. The director sensitively interweaves the relaxed and, in places, deliberately freewheeling talks about important episodes in Brabenec’s life (imbued with his spiritual-ecological temperament) with poetic moments of a meditative atmosphere.

Filip Šebek

About the film

90 min / Color, DCP

Director Miroslav Janek / Screenplay Miroslav Janek podle námětu / based on an original idea by Renata Kalenská / Dir. of Photography Miroslav Janek / Music Vratislav Brabenec, Joe Karafiát, The Plastic People of the Universe / Editor Tonička Janková / Producer Vit Klusák, Filip Remunda / Production Hypermarket Film s.r.o. / Coproduction Česká televize / Contact Hypermarket Film s.r.o. / Distributor Aerofilms

About the director

Miroslav Janek (b. 1954, Náchod, Czechoslovakia) started out as an amateur filmmaker. In 1980 he emigrated to the USA where he collaborated with a number of documentarists (e.g. Godfrey Reggio), returning to his homeland in the mid 1990s. He achieved great success with a work about blind children taking pictures, The Unseen (1996 – Best Documentary Film ex aequo at the Karlovy Vary IFF). His extensive documentary filmography includes Hamsa, I Am (1999), The Musicians (1999), Crimson Sails (2001), Vierka, or The Mystery of Family B’s Disappearance (2005), Kha-chee-pae (2005), Citizen Havel (2008), and The Confessions of Kateryna K. (2008). In 2000 he created the feature-length documentary Battle for Life (co-dirs. Roman Vávra, Vít Janeček – KVIFF 2001). In 2012 the Karlovy Vary IFF presented his portrait of director Drahomíra Vihanová entitled Burning and in 2014 his documentary Olga portraying Olga Havlová.