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document document
Citizen havel (Obcan havel) Con artist
CZECH REPUBLIC
For seven years, dissident playwright-turned-statesman Václav Havel
USA
In the art world, there are no shortage of opinions on Mark Kostabi,
Director: Pavel Koutecky, Miroslav Janek gave the late documentarian Pavel Koutecky virtually unlimited access Director: Michael Sládek and several of them are shared with relish in Michael Sládek’s comedic
Producer: Jarmila Poláková to his life, and the result is one of the most complete and fascinating
Producer: Michael Sládek
documentary portrait Con Artist. Snaps one insider, “I’ve never heard
Screenwriter: Pavel Koutecky
portraits of a politician in the history of film.
Cinematographer: Michael Sládek
anything good about him.” Another likens his work to Applebee’s,
Cinematographer: Stano Slusny
Editors: Michael Sládek, Jacob Bricca then corrects himself: “Applebee’s aspiring to be Olive Garden.”
Editor: Tonicka Jankova
After leading his countrymen through the Velvet Revolution (which is Cast: Mark Kostabi, Michel Gondry,
MS: A to Z
chronicled in detail in The Power of the Powerless, also screening at
Andy Warhol
To be sure, art purists have plenty of reasons to loathe him. Early in
MS: A to Z
il
Cast: Václav Havel, Olga Havelova,
Václav Klaus, Dagmar Veskrnova,
SDFF 32), Václav Havel became the new Czech Republic’s first president 2009 / color / 80 min. the film, he introduces some of his pieces with the admission, “I made
il
Milos Zeman from 1993 to 2001. Apparently governed himself by good instinct, he
these paintings with some help.” We soon learn he means nothing but
E F
2008 / color / 120 min.
took counsel from a wildly disparate group of advisors and fashioned help. Despite his own inarguable talent, Kostabi made his name by
E F
h h
T
plenty of idealistic slogans: “Truth and love must prevail over lies and taking his mentor Andy Warhol’s concept of the Factory and running
hatred,” Havel proclaimed. But Koutecky, who died in a 2006 accident
MiChaEL SLÁDEK
T
with it, employing scores of artists to create the paintings he merely
A Denver native, Michael Sládek has
(a friend, Miroslav Janek, finished his work), got far beyond the official
taken on a variety of roles throughout
signs. Far from keeping his method a secret, he has installed a peeping
PaVEL KouTECKY
rhetoric. In a series of telling scenes, Havel takes Bill Clinton to a Prague
his career in media. A former talent
booth in his gallery where visitors can watch his employees at work,
Pavel Koutecky graduated from the Film
jazz club, where the American president sits in on tenor sax; gives advice coordinator for MTV News and and he hosts a game show, Title This!, challenging participants to name
and Television School at the Academy
when Rolling Stones guitarist Ron Wood asks about local restaurants;
consultant to SAGIndie, Sládek has also
of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague,
“his” works. “Modern art is a con,” he has said, “and I am the world’s
designed film and music marketing
going on to study at the National Film and slides offscreen following a cancer diagnosis to sneak one last greatest con artist.”
materials and worked as a published
and Television School in Beaconsfield,
smoke with, of all people, the Czech health minister. We also get a full
journalist; he now runs the production
England. He currently works for the Film
dose of his presidential quirks as he picks lint off his clothes, fusses with
company Plug Ugly Films.
The proof? His art sells, even to collectors whom he berates for buying
& Sociology Association and teaches in
his cigarettes, and, perhaps most revealing of all, asks French president what he assures them in no uncertain terms will depreciate rapidly.
FAMU’s documentary department.
Jacques Chirac: “Are these trousers too short?” Filmography Indeed, in 2007, Kostabi was even commissioned by the Vatican to make
Selected Filmography
Devils Are Dreaming (2004)
a sculpture that Pope Benedict XVI himself blessed upon its completion.
Seekers of a Fixed Point (2002)
It’s hard to imagine our spin-controlled leaders committing that This provocative documentary gives its audience fresh reason to ponder
Forever and Ever (1998) kind of unguarded moment to film. But then, Citizen Havel is a very the age-old question: what is art?
different kind of documentary about a very different kind of statesman.
Discussing his future after politics, the artist/playwright of old seems to
MiroSLaV JanEK reemerge. “I’ll just go from pub to pub,” he muses, “my pockets full of
Miroslav Janek has worked in the film
well-thumbed photos of the people I used to know.” Thanks to Pavel
industry and taught filmmaking in
Koutecky, we get to know Havel himself pretty well.
both the United States and the Czech
Republic. In the 1970s he edited for
Czechoslovakian TV in Prague, and in
In cooperation with: bouncingCzechs.US productions
the 1980s he worked as an editor and
cinematographer in Minneapolis. He
has directed nearly 40 short films.
Selected Filmography
Crimson Sails (2001)
Battle for Life (2000)
62
Hamsa, I Am (1998)
Opera Baroque (1997) 63
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