Lyudyna K

Serhiy Rakhmanin's screenplay Vigilia (Latin for vigil, loosely based on E.T.A. Hoffmann) caused a stir among those who happened to get hold of it. What a young author it must be, they said, who has succeeded in linking German Romanticism, which was well received in the Soviet Union, to the author Franz Kafka, the holder of a non-optimistic world view detested and avoided like a red rag by the socialist literary and cultural system. In the end, the film was made almost 10 years later, with an Odesa production company taking on this unique underground work. The dark and quiet film is about the creator in a total crisis, about hopelessness and about the unfinished in art. Kafka in the mind, as a vision and suffering from the horror of the world. (bw)