Time Is My Luxury

Marianne Worliček / Czechoslovakia / 1969 / 9 min.

synopsis

This documentary focuses on composer and actor Jan Klusák. It portrays him in the roles he played in Jan Němec’s films The Party and the Guests and Martyrs of Love and also highlights Klusák’s Čtyři malá hlasová cvičení (Four Little Vocal Exercises), which was composed using a theme from Franz Kafka. Following the performance of these “exercises” at Prague’s Theatre on the Balustrade, he went on to collaborate with E. Schorm and V. Chytilová. The film captures him at home (“I’m conservative; I can only work in my own room.”), in the corridor of the Rudolfinum and on walks in the Jewish Cemetery in Olšany. It inquires into his decision not to emigrate after the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia (“When you’re unhappy, there’s nowhere to run from it.”). An alienating effect emerges towards the end of the work, as Klusák advises the crew to pan the camera towards themselves in the mirror. The work is a second-year exercise at FAMU’s Department of Film Directing.

biography

Marianne Samaan Worlicek Rosenbaum (1940–1999) came from a displaced Sudeten family originally from Litoměřice. She studied painting in Germany and graduated from the Department of Film and Television Directing at FAMU in 1972. She married her classmate, Syrian film student Gérard Samaan. While at FAMU, she also directed the films Společenská hra (A Party Game, 1969), Oslava pokračuje (The Party Goes On, 1971) and Vojáček (The Little Soldier, 1972). In Germany, she went on to direct the children’s pacifist film Peppermint-Frieden (Peppermint Peace, 1983), for which she was awarded the Max Ophüls Prize. With G. Samaan, she directed Lilien in der Bank (Lilies in the Bank, 1996) and, independently, the television films Tödlich gilt nicht (It’s Not Deadly, 1985) and Das Sonntagskind oder der Umstände halber (The Sunday Child, or Due to Circumstances, 1988).