Vratislav Effenberger or Black Shark Hunting

David Jařab / Czech Republic / 2018 / World Premiere / 84 min.

synopsis

In the spirit of this master of poetics, David Jařab approaches his portrait of leading Czech postwar surrealist Vratislav Effenberger as a game. He invited members of the local surrealist group to talk about Effenberger in places where he stages absurd encounters and interrelationships. The main theme is Effenberger’s unrealized (unrealizable) screenplays, which the filmmakers attempt to enact during the film. This surrealistic hunt for Effenberger’s imagination is capped by an interview with his son full of ambivalent personal memories.

“Effenberger’s work with absurd humour and the principle of game enabled him to subversively attack the outer and inner realities of everyday life. This vision is close to mine and to the vision of my film.” D. Jařab

biography

Longtime member of the surrealist group David Jařab (1971) works mainly as a film and theater director. He is the in-house director at Prague’s Komedie Theatre, and he has directed two feature film influenced by surrealist poetics: Vaterland: A Hunting Logbook (2004) and Head – Hand – Heart (2010). In 2004, he directed the four-part surrealist television program An Evening with Analogon Magazine, which was broadcast on Czech Television.