The Eternal Song

director: Karol Plicka

original title: Věčná píseň

year: 1941

running time: 24 min.

synopsis

Karol Plicka was an important musician and composer. He recorded folk songs immediately after hearing them in musical notation to preserve them for future generations. Similarly, he records and interprets traditions associated with dance, folk song and local stories that vary from region to region in his film The Eternal Song. The short documentary presents merry-making in Slovak and Czech regions that are changing with the coming modernization and transformation of musical records.

Slovak Institute is the partner of the section Translucent Being: Karol Plicka.

biography

Karol Plicka (1894–1987) was a famous Slovak-Czech photographer, folklorist, filmmaker and collector of moments, ethnographer, cameraman, director, music scientist and pedagogue, violin virtuoso and professor, co-founder of the Prague FAMU film school (1946), admirer of nature and traditional folk work, and admirer of architecture and folk crafts. Plicka’s films have been awarded at festivals in Italy (Florence, Venice) and his photography books and songbooks are still collectible today. Karol Plicka was a personality who still inspires and motivates enthusiasm for the culture of our ancestors.