Festival NINE GATES 2010

The International Czech-German-Jewish culture

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XI. Nine Gates Festival 2010

This year, the year 2010 marks the 65th anniversary of the end of World War II. The festival is preparing in cooperation with the Ministry of Defence and the Military History Institute, under the auspices of Minister of Defence Mr. Martin Bartak, project, task reminders of Czechoslovak soldiers - Jews - in the army corps operating to the east and west of us. In addition to archival materials (photographs, films, documents) familiarize the public with living survivors of that time.
The main theme of this year's 11th Festival is a Romanian Jewish culture. Romania is a country which currently has five times the community of citizens of Jewish religion. In Bucharest, as in Moscow, has a professional Jewish theater. Professional publications mention a significant proportion of Jewish musicians from Transylvania to develop in the Ashkenazi Jewish music concept.
An important representative of the Romanian Jewish culture, literature and so I decided to select and invite one of the Romanian Writers in Prague and organize literary evenings with him. I think we have to choose from and the audience have something to look forward.
Prague Programme of minority section of the festival, as always, make up artists from Germany, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Russia.
Spring top part of the present Czech artists Romanian - bukurešťským citizens.
Autumn and Winter Festival of Nine Gates will open at the end of September the traditional film festival in Luhačovice and will continue into early November multicultural festival in Trutnov, and will be completed once the project gates in the Czechoslovak capital, Bratislava, Slovak Republic.





Summer - Prague

21. 6. 2010
Řehoř Samsa Bookshop / Literature and Film

6.00 p.m.
Norman Manea, ROMANIA
(The Hooligan’s Return)
Literatura
Chuligánův návrat
Translated by: Jiří Našinec

In October 1941 the whole Jewish population in Romania’s Bukovina is transported to the concentration camp, including a nine-year boy who is not yet aware of the fact that he will have to escape from reality many times again. After his return he faces another savage clash with the communism, then with his own self and resolve to leave the country. With a wealth of personal experience, Manea portrays the individual’s life from adolescence to adulthood, displaying a narrative brilliance and revealing the brutality of his experience without being sentimental, but so grippingly depicted that he captivated the readers literally in the whole world. The book Hooligan’s Return has been included among the most interesting titles of the year in the New York Times and has been translated into more than twenty languages. Norman Manea lives in the U.S.A., currently serves as a Professor at Bard College in New York and for his provocative and scathing novel about a true emigré who, however, has never ceased to be a European by his feelings, has already received a number of prestigious international awards.

21 June 2010, 8:00 p.m.


8:00 p.m.
Zaplaťpánbůh za fotbal
(Thank God for Football), CZECH REPUBLIC
Film
Story: František Steiner (author of a book Fotball Under the Yellow Star) and Petr Feldstein
Script Writer: Petr Feldstein
Editor: Milan Justin
Music Supervisor: Josef Spitzer
Director of Photography: Petr Šanda
Production Manager: Kamila Šlaisová
Director: Ivan Stehlík

A documentary about football contests and football players in the Terezín (Theresienstadt) Ghetto between 1943 and 1944. A documentary about those who played and loved football at the death’s door and who drew faith and hope from it. A documentary about those for whom football meant life. A documentary showing that football is one of the greatest peaceful arts of man. Players and spectators of one-time football contests in the Terezín Ghetto appear in the film Thank God for Football: Arnošt Lustig, Tommy Karas, Toman Brod, Bedřich Korn, Miloš Dobrý, Felix Kolmer, Tomáš Kosta, Petr Erben.


22. – 25. June 2010 / beginings at 7:00 p.m.
Divadlo pod Palmovkou /
Theatre and Exhibition

Sklep Theatre
22 June 2010
Piš, Kafka, Piš (Write, Kafka, Write),
Franz Kafka et al.
CZECH REPUBLIC

Based on Franz Kafka’s life and work written, prepared and performed by actors of the SKLEP Theatre M. Načeva, J. Slovák, D. Vávra and L. Vychodilová.
The performance is the authors‘ original spectacle inspired by Franz Kafka‘s known and unknown works, dramatic situations described in his Diaries or his biographer‘s recollections. At times bleak report on the world is not treated gloomily by the authors, with usual cliches, but is full of witticisms in the same vein as an absurd burlesque once intended by Kafka. Coloured by an extraordinary musical track. Aromatized with a physical struggle.


F. X. Šalda Theatre, Liberec
23 June 2010
Dnes večer Lola Blau
(Tonight Lola Blau), Georg Kreisler
CZECH REPUBLIC

Young singer Lola Blau is just about to leave Vienna for Linz where she is to start her first engagement, as she receives a phone call from her uncle who advises her from the Czechoslovak border to emigrate. When Lola arrives at Linz she finds out that they have already replaced her by another singer who is worse than she, but on the other hand, has blonder hair, bluer eyes and longer skull. She arrives at Switzerland, then heads for America, makes a brilliant career and after war returns back home in order to consider how much those several mad years have changed the world and herself. A chamber musical narrates in a cabaret form and in a frosty naive style about this part of the 20th century, after which the world could never be the same as before.


State Jewish Theatre, Bucharest
24 June 2010
Svatba s rozvodem (Anatevka),
Sholem Aleichem,
ROMANIA

A musical comedy by a world-renowned playwright Sholem Aleichem, an author of the Fiddler on the Roof, the most famous musical about joys and sorrows of the life of a Jewish community in Ukraine. About a mother-in-law who tries to spoil the marriage of her daughter by spreading lies about her son-in-law. It is a short story whose plot is conveyed in a very stylized, comical fashion with musical inputs. The performance also presents traditional Jewish customs that give account of a picturesque life of the Jewish community in the good old days.


State Jewish Theatre, Bucharest
25. 6. 2010
Dynastie Efrosů, Jacob Gordin,
RUMUNSKO

Vrcholné dílo dramatika Jacoba Gordina. Popisuje život židovské rodiny v malém polském městě kolem roku 1900. Mirale je silná noblesní, ale také autokratická žena. Díky svým dovednostem a nekompromisní vůlí zachrání manželův podnik od bankrotu. Její autorita je jednoho dne ohrožena příchodem Sheindl, která si vezme za muže jejího syna. Vztahy v rodině se naruší do té míry, že se Mirale svůj milovaný domov opustit. Po deseti letech odloučení se celá rodina opět sejde na oslavě vnukova Bar Mitzvah.


26 June 2010, 4:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.
Wallenstein Garden (Valdštejnská zahrada) /
Music

Kateryna Kolcová and Boro Balkan Band,
CZECH REPUBLIC

Kateryna Tlustá-Kolcová, a singer, was born on 6 August 1971 in Kiev, Ukraine. As she was raised in a single-parent home by her mother only, she grew up in a difficult family situation. Although she had no idea of her national origin, since her young age she has had contacts with the Jewish environment. Her biggest dream was to become a singer. She completed her studies at the grammar school for the weak-sighted and at the Primary School of Arts. As none of the Ukrainian art universities, due to her weak-sightedness did not allow her to study, the only solution for her was to study folkloristics and she made good use of it in her art. Through the editorial office of Radio Free Europe she managed to arrive in the Czech Republic and study singing at the Jan Deyl’s Conservatory for visually impaired and blind people in Prague. In the Czech Republic she fell in love and got married. As she herself said, her husband is the best of all. He accompanies her during her concert activities and supports her a lot. Singing of Kateřina Tlustá-Kolcová is enormously vigorous and tender. Jewish folk songs, in her interpretation, due to their urgency, feeling and tenderness leave no one cold, her beautiful deep voice has dynamics and is colourful and therefore she is definitely one of the biggest discoveries of our musical scene. Currently, she studies ethnomusicology at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague.

Boro Balkan Band
The band is comprised of Serbian and Greek musicians. They have been playing and singing together the original music of Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina for six years already. They performed at many ethno festivals in the Czech Republic and abroad, most recently at the festival in Zakopane, Poland. They say that they are not in it to make a career, they play to express their feeling through music for themselves and for their listeners.


Diabolské husle (Devil’s Violins) - SLOVAKIA
The Diabolské Husle Orchestra was established in 1991. The main credit for its formation goes to an outstanding Slovak violinist and composer - Ján Berky-Mrenica senior, who is also the key author of a folk part of the orchestra’s repertoire.
Seven musicians in the orchestra have graduated from various Academies of Music. In 1997 Mr Berky-Mrenica senior, for health reasons handed over the post of the artistic director of the orchestra to his son – Ján Berky-Mrenica junior who continues a successful artistic career building on his father’s achievements (he received the Slovak Grammy Award - the Best Musical Performer of the Year - from the Slovak Musical Academy in 2000). After the death of Ján Berky’s parents the orchestra temporarily stopped performing and after two years is back on the musical scene in full rig!. Diabolské husle is the name that for several decades was and still is the epitome of the top quality in the area of folk culture and folk music interpretation in Slovakia.


Di Naye Kapelye
- HUNGARY, ROMANIA, the U.S.A.
Bob Cohen: violin, mandolin, koboz, cumbus, flute, Carpathian drum, singing
Yankl Falk: singing, clarinet
Ferenc Pribojszki: cimbalom, Carpathian drum
Gyula Kozma: bass, koboz

The band was established in 1994 in Hungary and its name means in Yiddish „New Band“. They play the ancient Jewish music anchored in the current time. This is a music for dancing, singing, for celebration and recollection. Di Naye Kapelye performs klezmer music as a living folk music tradition from Eastern Europe, without any hints of nostalgia. Their performances are vigorous, illuminating, it is a dance music from Eastern Europe, in particular from Hungary, Romania and Moldavia, these are Jewish folk songs and also Hasidic traditional songs, newly interpreted, with strong emphasis put on respecting individual regional styles.


Harry Tavitian, Orient Express - ROMANIA
Harry Tavitian has been for 20 years already an outstanding musician of not only Romanian jazz scene. His ethno-jazz is a fusion of a folk Romanian music using the tunes of Romanian Jewish musicians and jazz elements. The Orient Express musical group is comprised of seven young musicians from all parts of Romania. Similarly, as the Orient Express travelled from Paris to Stamboul via all European big cities, also the music that the Orient Express performs is inspired by individual fragments of the cultural mosaic of the West, the East, the Balkans and the Orient and blends them into a unique and original sound.


Freudenthal Yiddish Klezmer Band - SWEDEN
Alexander Freudenthal: clarinet & vocals
Peter Lindhamre: trumpet
Staffan Findin: trombone
Hans Nyman: accordeon
Jakob Freudenthal: bass
Pär Jaktelius: drums

The FYKB come from Stockholm and after last year’s extraordinary success of their performance that epitomized handing over of the Czech Presidency of the EU to Sweden, we have invited this band again to Prague at the audience’s request.


27 June 2010, 3:00 p.m.
Romanian Cultural Institute / Film screening

Cold Waves - ROMANIA
Razboi pe Celea Undelor, Luxembourg, Germany, Romania, 2007, 108 minutes.
Director: Alexandru Solomon
Producer: Ada Solomon
Production company: HiFilm Productions
Director of Photography: Andrei Butica
Editor: Catalin Cristutiu

It is a love and hate story based on something that no one can see or touch: a radio wave. During the 80’s Radio Free Europe became a secret consolation and confidant of Romanian listeners. The radio was the most serious enemy of Nicolae Ceausescu – he has even hired a terrorist Carlos the Jackal, to close it down. Thereby, a strange alliance was struck between the Communist dictator and international terrorism. The world has changed. Other wars are waged now. But if you listen to the voices, you may even get a better picture…


27 June 2010
Radar Theatre / Music and Theatre

5:30 p.m.
Naches
Ostrava klezmer group
Music
The NACHES klezmer group was formed in 2007 and performs Eastern European Jewish folk music, the so-called klezmer. During its short musical career the Naches group made very soon big impact on the cultural scene. In 2008, it performed, inter alia, in Ostrava, at the international St. Wenceslas Musical festival or (together with the Adash vocal ensemble) at the prestigious international festival "Nine Gates" in Prague. In summer of 2008 Naches made a successful tour of England where, inter alia, it participated in the klezmer festival KlezFest and performed at a festival of the current Yiddish song „Majer Bogdanski Tribute“. The following is a lineup of the Naches group: Jakub Černohorský (violin), Igor Františák (clarinet), Tomáš Filip (bass), Tomáš Novotný (concertina) and Rostislav Mikeška (drums). Mrs Barbora Baranová, a prominent Czech performer of Yiddish songs, is the group’s solo singer.

Jakub Černohorský – violin
Tomáš Novotný – concertina
Tomáš Filip – bass
Rostislav Mikeška – drums
Barbora Baranová – singer



7:00 p.m.
Ty-já-tr Theatre, Prague, CZECH REPUBLIC
Raskolnikov (Raskolnikow)
Leo Birinski
Theatre

Leo Birinski, a mysterious playwright, film scriptwriter and director of the Jewish origin, was born probably on 8 June 1884 in Lisyanka in current Ukraine. His popularity as playwright peaked in the period 1910 – 1917 when he lived in Vienna and when in particular his drama Narrentanz (Dance of Fools) was a great success on many European scenes, even in the German theatre in New York. In 1921 Birinski left for Berlin and in 1927 moved to the U.S.A.. He worked especially as a film script writer, first for the German film, later for the U.S. one, participated as a co-director in the making of the film Das Wachsfigurenkabinett. In the U.S.A. he resumed writing of plays. Birinski died on 23 October 1951 at the Lincoln Hospital in Bronx and was buried in a mass grave at the Hart Island.
There were many legends associated with his person, some of them probably even spread by himself. There are many versions of the place and date of his birth (he himself officially stated three). In 1920, in Vienna a false rumour was spread about his suicide, even together with obituaries in the press. In spite of the denials published later, this information even found its way into encyclopaedias. His death certificate of 1951 does not contain, apart from his name and incorrect age, any other information.
The Ty-já-tr Theatre presents the Czech premiere of Raskolnikov. The German original of the play that was premiered at the Ducal Court Theatre in Gera on 9 April 1913 is available today only at two libraries: at the Library of Congress and the Royal Library in Stockholm. The play was translated into Czech from the Stockholm copy by Kateřina Bohadlová, the holder of the Evald Schorm Award.





II. Spring part, Bukurest 2010

The Jewish Theatre in Romania has a 130 year’s long tradition. It began in 1876 in Jassy, when Avram Goldfaden laid the foundations of the first professional Yiddish theatre in the world. Continuing this tradition, the State Jewish Theatre in Bucharest (with Harry Eliad as director since 1990) is striving to maintain alive the flame of Yiddish language and culture. The Jewish Theatre repertory embraces first of all plays and adaptations of the great Yiddish literature as well as translations into Yiddish from the world drama. The performances are unique by their special humour and melancholy, the charm of klezmer music and folk dances. The troupe disposes of the whole range of artistic means: from metaphorical style to the robust authenticity of traditional comedy and the sophistication of modern theatre.
In the last quarter of a century the theatre has toured successfully to the USA, Canada, Israel, Germany, Austria, Russia, Switzerland, Hungary, Great Britain, France, Greece and has participated in several international festivals.

Nine Gates, the festival of Czech-German-Jewish culture, has already for eleven years been reliably presenting international Jewish culture to the Czech audience. This project is unique in its concept and size in the region of former Czechoslovakia, the importance of which transgresses the borders of our country.
The basic idea of the festival is to present to the Czech audience Jewish culture that is alive, thriving and inspiring.
Each year the festival awards a “Grand Prix” of Nine Gates – a Chrystal Menorah. The award is given for contribution to both Czech as well as international Jewish culture. The festival also awards best films, both documentary and feature film.
The Chrystal Menorah has in the past gone to amongst others, the writer Adolf Burger, the film directors Roman Polanski and Jan Němec, the actor Vlastimil Brodský and the writer Arnošt Lustig.

26. 5. 2010, at 6 pm.
State Jewish Theatre, TES
Opening of the Exhibition
„Neighbours Who Disappeared“
a P roject (started in 1999 under the auspices of the Office of the president Vaclav Havel) and „Tribute to the Child Holocaust Victims“

The Education and Culture Centre of the Jewish Museum in Prague (ECC JMP) in collaboration with its project partner Forgotten NGO, with a support of the Terezín Memorial, Hidden Child, Czech Federation of Jewish Communities, invite anyone interested to participate in a unique project called „Neighbours Who Disappeared“. This project is a social phenomenon of the Czech Republic. In the light of strong assimilation of the Jewish population till 1939 and following radical change and in the shade of the period 1945-1989, which did not care of the gradual devastation of historic sights and religious life, the path on vanishing traces of local Jewish settlement might for young people become a find of special context.

26. 5. 2010, at 7 pm.
State Jewish Theatre, TES
Film
Documentary film
„Short Long Journey“
Czech Republic 2009, 82 min.

„About people, not only about Jews, about the evil in us, not only about the holocaust, about the present not only about the past“ In April 1945 Vojtech Gál was murdered on the way from Sachsenhausen to Schwerin. In April 2008 his son walked the same route in an attempt to find his father’s grave and leave a testimony. He was accompanied by friends, film makers and fellow pilgrims. They did not understand everything they came across. They could not comprehend some of the people with whom they talked. But it never occurred to them even for a moment that they were travelling without aim and meaning. They give harsh personal witness of their journey, anticipating neither agreement nor tolerance.

Theme: Fedor Gál
Camera: Richard Krivda
Dramaturgy: Jiří Gold
Music: Marian Varga
Photography: Miro Švolík
Graphic design: Radana Lencová
Editing: David Vojta
Director: Martin Hanzlíček
Producers: Fedor Gál, Jarmila Poláková
Duration: 82 minutes

The film was made with the support of the State Fund of the Czech Republic for the Support and Development of Czech Film

26. 5. 2010 at 9 pm.
Fe ature film
Diamonds of the Night
1964, black and white, 64 mins
Director: Jan Němec
Producer: Miloš Bergl
Screenplay: Arnošt Lustig, Jan Němec, adapted from Lustig’s novella Darkness Casts No Shadow (Tma nemá stín)
Photography: Jaroslav Kučera (and Miroslav Ondříček)
Editor: Miroslav Hájek, Jitka Šulcová
Design: Oldřich Bosák


One of the earliest Czech New Wave films, Jan Němec’s debut feature Diamonds of the Night (Démanty noci) is also one of the most startling, and remains a thrillingly original piece of cinema even today. Shot largely hand-held and virtually dialogue-free, it follows the desperate journey of two teenage boys who successfully escape a train bound for a Nazi concentration camp, only to find themselves hunted down by a band of old men whose physical decrepitude doesn’t make them any less lethal.
It was based on the novella Darkness Casts No Shadow (Tma nemá stín) by Arnošt Lustig, an Auschwitz survivor who became one of the main Czech chroniclers of the Holocaust, and who himself managed to escape from a Dachau-bound train after it was bombed by the Americans. Lustig co-wrote the screenplay and would later cite the film as his personal favourite of all the adaptations of his work.

27. 5. 2010, at 7 pm.
State Jewish Theatre, TES
Concert
NACHES

The Klezmer band NACHES interprets the traditional and the not so traditional folk music of the East European Jews. The band has taken part of many important Klezmer festivals, for example KlezFest in the UK. All songs are performed in Yiddish by Barbora Baranová.

Jakub Černohorský – violin
Tomáš Novotný – concertina
Tomáš Filip – double-bass
Rostislav Mikeška – percussion
Barbora Baranová – vocals

Free tickets at the box office of Teatrul Evreiesc
www.teatrul-evreiesc.ro




I. Spring part, Brno, Prague, León and Madrid 2010

1st path:
La Revoltosa – Ruperto Chapí
El Tambor de Granaderos – Ruperto Chapí
Doña Francisquita – Amadeo Vives
La Gran Vía de Chueca – Manuel Fernández Caballero
Los sobrinos del Capitán Grant – Manuel Fernández Caballero
La Chulapona – Federico Moreno Torroba
Don Manolito – Pablo Sorozábal

2nd path:
with dance group Ondráš
La boda de Luis Alonso – Jerónimo Giménez
Furiant a skočná
Po Myjavsky

Orquesta Sinfónica Chamartín & Coro Talía
Dirigent: Silvia Sanz