Kafka(esque) Cinema Weekend: Adaptations and Afterlives

Join us for a weekend of Kafkaesque cinema and a guest lecture by Prof. Angelos Koutsourakis.

For the centenary of Kafka’s death, the Lady Margaret Hall Foreign Film Club will host a screening supplementing the curriculum, open to the student and academic community in Oxford. The series will cover a selection of films which Kafka watched, adaptations of his prose, as well as ‘Kafkaesque’ cinema (Koutsourakis 2024).

Only a few days after having infamously written his story 'The Judgement' in one night, Kafka notes in his diary on 25 September 1912: “Heute abend mich vom Schreiben weggerissen. Kinematograph im Landesteater.”/ “Ripped myself away from writing tonight. Cinematograph at the Landesteater.” The films Kafka saw are less pretexts for his writings but co-phenomena of a literary reality he created. Films that adapt Kafka’s work investigate the borders between visual representation and the metaphorical ambiguity of Kafka’s worlds. And the filmic afterlives of Kafka’s style – translating motifs, topics, narrative methods into another, visual medium – give rise to what might be called 'Kafkaesque cinema'. The latter may provide a lens into a transnational visual culture that takes inspiration from and goes beyond Kafka’s critique of modernity.

Registration required: https://forms.office.com/e/VFiaRzqYzL 

Any questions? Please email sophia.buck@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk 

Programme

Saturday, 27 April

1.30pm – Kafka goes to the Movies

           Selection

3.00pm – Adapting Kafka's Prose

           The Metamorphosis – Swanton (2012, UK)

Coffee Break

5.15pm – Adapting Kafka's Short Stories

A Country Doctor [カフカ 田舎医者] – Koji Yamamura (2007, Japan)

A Hunger Artist  – Tom Gibbson (1992, USA)

6.00pm – Lecture:

Angelos Koutsourakis: ‘In Search of a Critical Category: The Kafkaesque’

7.15pm – Drinks reception

Sunday, 28 April

1.15pm – Kafka in Movies         

Franz Kafka – Piotr Dumala (1992, Poland)

            Felice (Episode 02) – (2024, Germany)

2.30pm – Kafkaesque Cinema I: Czech Surrealism

           Hmyz [Insects] – Svankmajer (2018, Czech Republic)

Coffee Break

4.30pm – Kafkaesque Cinema II: Berlin School

Transit  – Christian Petzold (2018, Germany/France)