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December 1st, 2008
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Around Town

Those summer nights

By Benjamin Thomas Cunningham
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
September 3rd, 2008 issue

It was the last night of a long — occasionally very hot — summer on Střelecký ostrov.

The sounds of Pohřební kapela (Funeral Band) boomed out across the Vltava as the setting sun meant it was getting dark enough for one final movie. A hot-air balloon floated across the skyline and the city lights reflected on the river.
To the right was the stage, and to the left the all-important refreshment stand. Straight ahead was the movie screen, which caught the projections emanating from a graffiti-covered trailer. In the middle was a crowd of people on worn sandy ground that said there had been many nights before like this one. Most of the plastic chairs on hand for the upcoming film were empty and sidelined as the crowd danced to a blend of reggae, punk and traditional Czech music.
“We are trying to be in the middle of the art cinemas and the multiplexes,” said Petr Pošvic, one of the organizers of the nightly concerts and movies that ran from early June through the end of August.
Now in its 12th year, these evenings were originally the idea of director Tomáš Vorel. On tap for the last night was Revue na zakázku, a 1982 film set in Kazakhstan that Pošvic calls “so stupid that I was laughing from the beginning to the end.”
The first few weeks each year are traditionally dedicated to Czech cinema before the series opens up to a more eclectic mix of music and film.
“We have figured out that it is popular with the expats,” Pošvic said, estimating that 85 percent of films are accessible to English speakers either in the film itself or via subtitles. This summer saw movies with origins in at least 19 countries, including cinema from such far-flung corners of the globe as Mongolia, New Zealand, India, China and Mexico, with the usual blend of Czech, European and American films mixed in.  
Looking back, the biggest success of this summer seemed to be when the line between concert and film was blurred, Pošvic said, as in a recent screening of Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Stones concert documentary Shine a Light.
“People were shouting at Mick and the band,” Pošvic said, over the brass instruments of the night’s own live music. “When the people are here I would say they are more enthusiastic.”
The atmosphere on this final night was celebratory but also had the potential to make people sorry they hadn’t taken fuller advantage of such events throughout the summer.  
Worse yet, plans to renovate the island have the future of the film series in doubt, with this year potentially its last.
“Renovation of the island is positive,” Pošvic says. “As far as I know, the cinema is not involved in the future plan.”
There must be some rational bureaucratic explanation for such a decision, but based on the scene Sunday night it’s hard to think of a good one. Prague 1 officials are said to have not as yet made a final decision on the future of the cinema nights.
“We’ll see,” says Pošvic, “but I haven’t seen any will from their side to have this again.”
On the rest of the island — away from the perpetual motion of the concert — couples sat on park benches and people picnicked down the steep shoreline. As the band paused between songs, live music from both banks of the Vltava was audible. A man giving his name only as Jan sat reading a book under a flood light.
“It is just a nice place to be,” he said.
Then the movie started.

Benjamin Thomas Cunningham can be reached at bcunningham@praguepost.com


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