Prophets and Poets

The writer Bohumil Hrabal once said: ‘One day I too decided that I would rather be a documentary-maker, an editor in the cutting room, than a writer.’ And Emile Zola prophecied: ‘In the end there will be a surfeit of long studies, without any form of plot or solution: analyses of a year in the life of, histories of passions, biographies of a person, details from life.’ These two texts are quoted by Ivan Vojnar in his philosophical documentary Prophets and Poets, a film that is very different in artistic means from Vojnar’s black-and-white, poetic and solemn The Way Through the Bleak Woods, that was screened at the festival in 1998.Vojnar follows the adventures of 16 totally different characters in Prague. He drinks a glass of wine with them in one of Prague’s cafes, meets them at home, at work, in the gardens of Prague. They all impart reflections about changes in the world. In line with the traditions of the great writers of Czech literature, we find the whole spectrum of characters here: the accordionist who was one of the best bar friends of Bohumil Hrabal (also to be seen in the documentary that Chris Kijne and John Jansen van Galen made about the writer), a well-known Prague astrologer, two street sweepers, a Czech emigrant who lives in America, a talented engineer, inventor and painter and an average Czech couple.