A Cage in Search of a Bird
100 Years after Kafka

We kicked off the celebration of Kafka's life and work with a screening of Kafka Goes to the Movies, with a special introduction by Ondrej Pometlo, Deputy Consul General of the Czech Republic in Chicago.

To mark the 100th anniversary of Franz Kafka's death, author Magdaléna Platzová and translator Alex Zucker discussied Platzová's book Life After Kafka. This novel imagines the story of Felice Bauer, Kafka’s first fiancée, after she escapes the horrors of the Holocaust. The conversation was moderated by Irena Čajková, followed by a reception.

This event was presented in collaboration with the Consulate General of the Czech Republic in Chicago and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago.

book*ish is our reading group for contemporary German graphic novels in German. Our second book club session featured the graphic novel 'Kafka,' written by David Zane Mairowitz and illustrated by Robert Crumb. Mairowitz and Crumb have compiled the essentials about Franz Kafka: from his childhood to the posthumous Kafka cult; about the conflicts the writer had to deal with himself and others, above all with his father. The focus is on Kafka's inner turmoil against the background of his German-Czech nationality and Jewish background. 

The point of departure for the discussion between Joseph Vogl and Eric L. Santner was an essay by Vogl on Franz Kafka adapted from his brilliant book, ‘On Tarrying,’ published by the University of Chicago Press. Vogl's essay takes Kafka's novel fragment, ‘The Castle,’ to exemplify central features of aesthetic experience, at least in modernity. Kafka's text creates a kind of pleasurable vertigo that puts our sense of being in the world into suspended animation.

We celebratd Kafkas life and work with a live public reading of classic and lesser-known Kafka stories and texts, including The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, A Hunger Artist, and many shorter texts. Local writers, elected officials, and even a human-sized cockroach took turns reading aloud 10-minute segments of each Kafka work.

As we celebrated the achievements of Kafka on the 100th anniversary of his death, the film adaptations of his work—or the spirit of his work—ought to undo the Kafkaesque reading and exposed us to his nobility.

The work of Franz Kafka is characterized by feelings of absurdity, futility, and existential fear, which gave rise to the term 'Kafkaesque.' In these short films, there were no direct adaptations of Kafka works, but was is a pervasive atmosphere of anxiety, disorientation, and political inefficacy. Animals acted with human-like qualities, narrators lost themselves in unending monologues, and the tools of filmmaking itself became haunting, humorous protagonists.

This screening was co-presented by Nightingale Cinema, Chicago Filmmakers, and the Goethe-Institut Chicago.