The Year of the Devil

While shooting a documentary about a detox centre for alcoholics, the Dutch documentary maker Jan Holman met the Czech folksinger Jaromir Nohavica. Holman chose the popular singer as central subject for his film and followed him in the following year of his difficult recovery and comeback as musician. Holman even went on tour with Nohavica, his regular accompanist Karel Plihal and the folk band Checomor (previously active at parties, events and in hotel lifts). The tour turned out to be a very spiritual voyage of discovery for all involved, a quest for the inner melodies that we all bear inside us… So far, the official storyline of The Year of the Devil by Petr Zelenka, Tiger Award winner in Rotterdam in 1998 with the equally strange Knoflíkari. Just like his earlier film Happy End, The Year of the Devil is about the vicissitudes of a group of musicians. This time, Zelenka made a ‘fake road rockumentary’ somewhere between The Year of the Horse and This is Spinal Tap. The subtle, absurd humour and the narrow boundary between reality and fiction can occasionally wrong foot the audience, partly because the musicians involved all play themselves (with Jaz Coleman the singer of Killing Joke in an extensive cameo). About alcohol, angels and spontaneous self combustion.