The relationship between cinema and one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century in the book “Kafkaian Screens. A Century of Cinema Inspired by Franz Kafka”, edited for Book Time by Claudia Bersani (co-director of Cinecultura – Cinema for schools) and Giancarlo Zappoli (editor in chief of MYmovies.it, national president of the Centro Studi Cinematografici, as well as a member of the jury at the Giardini Naxos Children’s Film Festival).
On September 4th, the presentation was held as part of Isola Edipo, a collateral event to the Venice Film Festival promoted by Edipo Re Impresa Sociale. The volume highlights how the masterpieces of the great Bohemian author, a leading exponent of modernism and a forerunner of surrealism and magical realism, have aroused interest at various levels in the world of the seventh art.
«The idea came not only from the centenary of his death, but also from the aim of creating a work on two levels – Zappoli tells us – On one hand, the films dedicated specifically to Kafka, and on the other, the challenge to critics to tell about films that in their opinion are Kafkaesque, but not recognized as such, in the sense that no one thought there was a thought similar to that of the great writer».
“Schermi kafkiani”, in fact, includes analyses of works inspired by Kafka’s thought or life that are very different from each other: feature films, animated shorts, but also fiction and TV series. The book opens with two introductory essays: the first outlines the relationship between the director and the documentary maker Louis DiGianni and the writer’s work, the second compares three different ways of transposing the story “The Metamorphosis”. Among the signatures, prestigious critics such as Paola Casella, Flavio Vergerio, Massimo Causo, Marco Duse and Giampiero Raganelli.
But why was Kafka so influential in cinema and can he still be so? “The themes of his works touch and have touched an entire century – says Bersani – so on an intimate and personal level we always find ourselves. Furthermore, we have discovered the twenty-year-old Kafka’s passion for cinema. Not only did he frequent it and write pieces on the subject, but the images evoked in his texts were interpreted with an approach not dissimilar to that of a director”. “Kafka wrote to his friend Oskar Pollak: “A book must be an axe to break the sea of ice that is inside us” – adds Zappoli – Many authors have therefore thought that that axe could be transferred to a language other than the literary one».
