Car-Men

a film by Jiří Kylián
and Boris Pavel Cohen
with
Sabine Kupferberg, Karel Hruska
Gioconda Barbuto, David Krugel
company Paradox

in collaboration with Duetto 2000 Rome

Car-Men is a black-and-white film by choreographer Jiří Kylián, based on the four archetypal characters from Bizet's Carmen . Shot in a Czechoslovakia coal mine with four dancers "between the ages and death" (Kylián),opera was created mostly on location and exclusively for the film. The key object is a 1930s car, a plastic fantasy reminiscent of the futuristic Czechoslovak Tatra. The film is a metaphor for time, speed, stillness, movement, youth and old age, while Carmen's story is a timeless epic. The four dancers interpetrate the four archetypes of Carmen: Carmen, the eternal seductress; Don José, the lover; Escamillo, the ladies' man; and the good-hearted Samaritan woman Micaela. These characters, dressed from as children, relive their past and tell their story in a surreal and tragicomic way.
Dutch composer Han Otten handled the music, with arrangements from Bizet and original music. The film was produced by the NPS company in co-production with ARTE and Ceská Televize, and with the cooperation of the Dutch Cultural Broadcasting Promotion Fund and the National Broadcasters.

Because this story is timeless, because it has already happened to the protagonists, because it is re-lived and re-interpreted now, and because the film will survive to we the creators, for all these reasons we decided that nothing in the film should be seen in actual time and speed. All sequences are sped up or slowed down. We want viewers to be constantly aware of time passing through us at every moment of our existence!
We felt that the ideal setting for this film was a place degraded by human presence - a desolate heath, which immediately arouses primary emotions:
1) machismo, narcissism, desire for fame and power... "everything is mine!..." - ESCAMILLO
2) wild love, unpredictability, impulsiveness, provocativeness totally dependent on one's own emotionality, lack of control over one's own emotions and disregard for consequences. Seductiveness toward anyone, including herself and all her neighbors! - CARMEN
3) the eternal Florence Nightingale, the Samaritan woman, no matter whether she rescues a murderer or her victim! She just wants to be remembered as, "....buona....!" Synonymous with "eternal victim" because every situation in which she happily involves herself ends in total disaster.
Because she is no help to anyone, least of all to herself.... - MICAELA
4) is, just like "Don Quixote," made to save love - not only for himself, but for all of humanity. Not wanting to offend anyone, it is always positive. But in his intent to save humanity from evil, he could destroy more than just himself - DON JOSÉ

Birth-Day

conception, choreography, stage installation and lighting by Jiří Kylián
music Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
costumes Joke Visser
film-video P. & p Lataster Films
video editing Rob de Groot-Vidishot
dancers Gioconda Barbuto,
Sabine Kupferberg, David Krügel, Gerard Lemaltre, Egon Madsen

Paradoxincompany in collaboration with Duetto 2000 Rome

"We all have a birthday and celebrate this event every 365 days...
This is a cycle in which nature is born, dies and is reborn regardless of our existence. We wonder why we were born, what was before us and what will be after us. But there are not, nor will there ever be, satisfactory answers.
Until from when I was very young, I always had a deep feeling that our birth certificate was basically our death sentence (as Francis Bacon said: ´After all, we are here to die´ ). I also felt that parents, when they conceive a child, die in a certain sense metaphorically; they have given birth to a new life and consequently their own life becomes superfluous having already fulfilled their genetic duty.
Sometimes, when our birthday comes, we think about the day we were born but perhaps also about the day we will die (or be reborn). It is always the same cycle of a year that has passed, of nature first sprouting and greening and then blooming, in warmth and sunshine, maturing and swelling, deliciously reaping its fruits to then face frost-the imaginary end of time-but only to prepare each all the energy to be reborn.
Between our birth and our death we spend a lot of time and energy, studded with creativity, desires, love and confusion.... and during most of this time we do nothing but fool ourselves.
Mozart, whose music I have chosen for this production, is the greatest example of someone in whom the time between day to and day Z was painfully limited but who, nevertheless, seized life in all its richness, imagination, irreverence and folly. It is his spirit that, with the acceptance that our life is nothing more than a masquerade or dress rehearsal of something of deeper meaning, inspired my creation."
Jirí Kylián

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