Afterwards: documentary “Do you know Kafka?” on the 100th anniversary of the poet’s death – from 10:30 p.m. on ORF 2
Vienna (OTS) – In a “kulturMontag Spezial” edition on June 3, 2024 at 10:30 p.m. on ORF 2, ORF TV culture director Martin Traxl will take you to the Salzkammergut and find out how well it has adapted to its role as European Capital of Culture. He speaks, among others, with the local musical hero Hubert von Goisern, with archaeologist Hans Reschreiter, award-winning chef Christoph “Krauli” Held and Capital of Culture Year director Elisabeth Schweeger and also presents highlights of the program. Following the magazine, the documentary “Do you know Kafka?” (11:15 p.m.) is on the program to mark the 100th anniversary of the writer’s death. In it, biographer Reiner Stach takes you through the stages of Kafka’s short life and refutes some entrenched ideas about the world’s most read German-speaking author.
More about the “culture Monday special”
In this program, Martin Traxl accompanies the audience through the Salzkammergut, a region that is hard to beat in terms of scenic beauty – a place of longing steeped in history and rich in culture. And this is exactly what everything in the Salzkammergut will revolve around in 2024, because 23 communities around Bad Ischl have joined forces to become the European Capital of Culture and have been awarded the contract. For the first time in history, a rural region has received this prestigious title. Five months after the opening, “kulturMontag” travels to the Salzkammergut and asks:
How well has the region adapted to its role as European Capital of Culture? What are the most exciting projects? Which regional cultural workers should be discovered and who are the international guests who will enrich the Salzkammergut this year?
The topic is also the history of the region, which is characterized by salt, experienced a lot of migration and also played a special role during National Socialism. The program visits vacant properties that become places of art in the Capital of Culture year, looks over the shoulders of the artists in the Handwerkshaus in Bad Goisern and meets award-winning chef Christoph “Krauli” Held in Bad Ischl, who runs the former train station restaurant together with students The local tourism college has transformed it into a small but fine restaurant.
Moderator Martin Traxl talks to the archaeologist Hans Reschreiter, who knows the cultural landscape shaped by salt like no other. He climbs into the Plätte with the exceptional artist and local musical hero Hubert von Goisern and takes a lap around Lake Hallstatt. Traxl talks to the director of the Capital of Culture year, Elisabeth Schweeger, about the focus of her program, about previous and upcoming highlights as well as the criticism that preceded the Capital of Culture year.
“kulturMontag” also presents regional and international artists, including the German comic artist Simon Schwartz, the versatile musician Anna Schauberger and the Nigerian artist Emeka Ogboh, who is brewing his own beer for the Capital of Culture year.
Documentary “Do you know Kafka?” (11:15 p.m.)
We think we know him: the mysterious genius, the sick, introverted, unworldly loner. But what is behind this Kafka myth? How did it come about? What is poetry and what is truth? Myths and legends spin around the world’s most read German-speaking author. How much Kafka is in his characters? How “Kafkaesque” was his existence actually? How did he feel about women? And religion? The life and work of the Prague-born poet raise many questions that can only be answered in fragments in Pavel Simak’s film.
The persistent clichés only do partial justice to reality. They came about because generations of readers interpreted the political debacles of the 20th century into Kafka’s work and confused the author with his characters. The documentary takes the last and unfinished novel “The Castle” as the starting point for the search for the “real” Franz Kafka. New insights into the writer’s life, his work and his creative process are revealed. Kafka biographer Reiner Stach in particular provides facts that clearly refute the image of the introverted, asexual intellectual and pale urban eccentric. In addition, Kafka’s thoughts and letters written down on paper, unpublished, filmed interviews with Max Brod from 1964 and 1968 as well as an interview with Kafka’s personal physician Dr. Popper helped to reinterpret the life and literary work of the famous poet. The film paints a completely new portrait of Franz Kafka, based on recent research and previously unpublished archive material.