Vít Soukup - Death Among the Coal

AUTHORSHIP

Equal co-authorship: Vít Soukup

CLASSIFICATION

Classification: film/videoart

DATES

Date of creation: 1998

SUBJECT

Other persons appearing in the film: Hana Puchová, Jiří Surůvka, Jan Materna, Pavel Noga, paní Kopasová, Vít Soukup, Adam Hlaváč, Zuzana Ťuláková, Nina Goldemundová, Kateřina Pechová

COLLABORATORS AND PARTICIPANTS

Other collaborators: Kateřina Bažantová, Václav Krejčí, Jan Svoboda jr., Jan Hoch

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

Duration: 00:22:38
Sound: Sound

EXHIBITIONS, PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS

Compilation containing the work: Vít Soukup: Everything!, 2012
Attachment included with work’s publication: booklet CZ/EN

NOTES AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Notes: Included in the compilation Vít Soukup: Everything! Films and Theater Performances 1993–2003 (edited by T. Nekvindová, S. Sobotovičová) - published in 2012 by the Research Centre of Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (VVP AVU) in cooperation with Divus.

Written and directed by: Vít Soukup

Adopted text on the work: Soukup plays with the clichés of Czech detective movies and communist-era television series. A murder is committed near Ostrava. The experienced Captain Turinský from Prague (a mixture of several well-known Czechoslovak television detectives) and his assistant Šlemra search in vain for the perpetrator, until a random witness helps them discover the truth. The industrial wasteland in which the story unfolds has a strong emotional charge. In this bleak landscape, the characters’ brutality seems almost logical: “People are shaped by their environment.”

The film was shot in Ostrava against a backdrop of rusting coal mining towers, and “starred” not only the local dialect but also emerging representatives of the distinctive Ostrava art scene (such as Hana Puchová and Jiří Surůvka). Vít Soukup subsequently reworked Death among the Coal as a photo-story of stills from the film for the fourth (unpublished) issue of Divus magazine, and continued the never-ending Captain Turinský detective series in other magazines, including Umělec and Artur. On 27 May 1998, Soukup’s Suppository Theatre presented a theater performance of the story at a performance evening of the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design at the Roxy club, and also at an Academy performance evening on 22 April 1999 at the Palác Akropolis in Prague – though under a different name: Snot among the Coal (a play on words: Smrt=Death / Smrk=Snot).
Source of text: Edice VIDA 3, VVP AVU, 2012
Author of text: Terezie Nekvindová, Sláva Sobotovičová
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INFORMATION IN PARTNER DATABASES

Artlist #1: Record at Artlist