Kafka goes to the movies

Franz Kafka was a regular moviegoer who enjoyed the cinema with cinephile pleasure, but also with a critical eye. Notes about the films he saw can be found in his diaries and correspondence. We are showing Hanns Zischler's audiovisual-documentary search for clues, as well as some of the films mentioned by Kafka, with a short introduction by Flora Roussel, researcher in Comparative and General Literature, German and East Asian Studies and literature and second-language teacher at LaSalle College in Montreal:

KAFKA GOES TO THE MOVIES

Directed by Hanns Zischler
Germany, 2002
DVD, 55 min.

While working on a television film project about Franz Kafka, the German actor Hanns Zischler discovered a series of passionate notes in Kafka's diaries about his visits to the cinema. Zischler, who also authored a book of the same title, spent the next twenty-five years scouring archives and libraries to locate many of the now-vanished films Kafka mentioned in his diaries. The result is a witty speculation on the writer's fascination with the cinematic and Zischler's fascination with Kafka. "Kafka Goes to the Movies" is dedicated to the numerous attempts to adapt Kafka's work for a film format, examining the relationship, imaginary or real, between the celebrated writer and a revolutionary new medium of film.

Zischler, who also authored a book of the same title, spent the next twenty-five years scouring archives and libraries to locate many of the now-vanished films Kafka mentioned in his diaries.The result is a witty speculation about the writer's fascination with the cinematic and Zischler's fascination with Kafka. "Kafka Goes to the Movies" is dedicated to the numerous attempts to adapt Kafka's work for a film format, exploring the relationship, imagined or real, between the celebrated writer and a revolutionary new medium of film.

This event is presented in collaboration with the Museum of Jewish Montreal / Musée de Montreal Juif.