In eight individual events with art, film, literature and music. In the Kafka Year 2024, a special focus will be on the legacy of the great Prague writer.
We are proud that the ‘Vienna Meets Prague’ festival is celebrating its fifth edition this year. And in the Kafka year 2024, it is logical that this Prague writer receives special attention,” says Ludger Hagedorn, IWM Permanent Fellow and curator of the festival.
Ludger Hagedorn, festival curator
Vienna (OTS) – The festival week kicks off Kafka Bandwhich on June 2nd at 8:30 p.m at the jazz club Porgy & Bess from their concept album Der Process plays. Music mixes with literature, melancholy with absurd humor and the German language with Czech – like in the streets of Prague at the time when Kafka lived here.
Am June 3rd at 5:30 p.m., the 100th anniversary of Kafka’s death, feels festival curator and IWM Permanent Fellow Ludger Hagedorn together with Manfred Müller, Managing Director of the Austrian Society for Literature and President of the Franz Kafka Society, traces the last weeks of Kafka’s life. Starting on April 12th, a podcast from the Franz Kafka Society tells of this time shortly before his death. Day after day, exactly 100 years later, a picture of the time is created in approximately 5-minute contributions, which brings to life the central stages in the biography of the famous Prague author through retrospectives and stories.
The same evening at 20:00 Visitors can work together with the director David Schalko and author Daniel Kehlmann Dive into their six-part Kafka film biography. In conversation with IWM rector Misha Glenny It will also be about the conceptual design of this series, which, by choosing to focus on important people in Kafka’s life, took a risk that seems to have been successful.
The afternoon of 4. June is dedicated to Kafka’s often forgotten connections to the Czech language and culture. Away 17:00 In the depot, Czech, Slovakian and Austrian students read short texts by the author in their own language and talk about what these passages mean to them. The event will be rounded off with a presentation by Veronika Jičínská, which reports on the importance of translation for the Czech reception of Kafka and in particular talks about Milena Jesenská, his correspondent, lover and first translator. Afterwards it changes 19:00 the award-winning journalist and author Magdaléna Platzová her novel Life after Kafka about the biography of Felice Bauer, Kafka’s fiancé. Other companions of the writer are also discussed.
Am June 5th at 7:30 p.m the top cinema shows the film Valley of the Bees (Das Tal der Bienen) the Czechoslovakian master director František Vláčil from 1967. The historical drama in black and white traces the life of the young Bohemian nobleman Ondřej, whose life is promised to the crusaders of the Teutonic Order. This will be followed by a conversation with Michal Bregant, director of the National Film Archive in Prague.
The second musical highlight of the festival week will once again be a concert in cooperation with the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Vienna. On the evening of June the 6th will be awarded many times Vienna Piano Quartet Perform pieces by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Bohuslav Martinů. Admission is free, but registration is requested.
At the end of the festival, the IWM invites you to… June 7th at 5 p.m In addition, with free admission, the analogue photographs of Andrej Kasik to discover. As part of the new exhibition Photograph – Pantograph Around 60 black and white works are shown that were created in Prague, Lviv and on trips between these two cities. The artist is present.
“We are proud that the ‘Vienna Meets Prague’ festival is celebrating its fifth edition this year. And in the Kafka year of 2024, it is logical that this Prague writer receives special attention,” says Ludger HagedornIWM Permanent Fellow and curator of the festival.
More information and detailed program at www.viennameetsprague.com.
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