This year's special screenings will give us a hefty dose of suspense: the opening film is none other than the DekkaDancers dance company's gangster performance of The Last Supper. Original music and vocals lend a uniqueness to this work, which is about murderous cooks, secret agents and the deadly beauty of Russian ballerinas.
At exactly 12:45, visitors to the Golden Prague Festival will be transported to South Africa, where the Iuventus, gaudé! children's choir from Jablonec nad Nisou met with success at the World Choir Games amateur choir contest. These young songsters brought back gold and silver medals from their journey afar. Their performance was captured on camera by Jan Mudra, who also directed the Iuventus, gaudé! in Africa documentary. The story includes a portrait of Tomáš Pospíšil, who has led the choir ever since it was established in 2005.
Music, classical this time, will also be the focus of the next screening, Granados – Life and Death, which is planned to start at 13:30. This documentary film about a Spanish music composer and one of the greatest pianists of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Enrique Granados Campiñovi, tells the biographical story of this sensitive artist who passed away under tragic circumstances during the First World War.
And we'll linger a while longer with the biographical films. Jan Pěruška teaches viola at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and his wife, Marcela, played the cello with the Czechoslovak Chamber Orchestra. Their three sons are all successful musicians and keen athletes, and their daughter was born mentally handicapped. Maxmilián Petřík's documentary The Ability to Caress the Soul, about the union of music, faith and familial solidarity, starts at 14:45.
We then skip nimbly over to ballet, and the Czech National Ballet at that. After celebrating the 100th anniversary of the creation of Czechoslovakia, the National Ballet prepared a special staging of Kylián – Bridges of Time, which paid tribute to the Prague-born eminent choreographer Jiří Kylián. The composed work, presenting four opuses – the Symphony of Psalms, Bella Figura, Petite Mort and Six Dances – can be viewed from 15:45.
Even devotees of the freest music genre will have a field day. Starting from 17:30 there will be a silver-screen tasting of Stories of Czech Jazz – a programme that focuses on key moments in the history of jazz that fixed composers within a social and historic context.
Last in this parade of special screenings is one episode of the documentary series entitled National Theatre, directed by Aleš Kisil, which records the ups and downs of our first theatre stage.
11:00 The Last Supper
12:45 Iuventus, gaudé! in Africa
13:30 Granados – Life and Death
14:45 The Ability to Caress the Soul
15:45 Kylián – Bridges of Time
17:30 Stories of Czech Jazz
18:30 National Theatre: Myth and Reality
Moderated by Veronika Paroulková.