Plácám, tedy jsem

About the film

Before closing time, restaurateur and amateur philosopher Pierre de Bon-bon sees an unexpected and mysterious guest in his pub, with whom he discusses his philosophical theory that "the human soul passes through the stomach" over wine, while also revealing what should remain secret. The elegantly dressed gentleman listens willingly, but his speech is enigmatic and gives the impression that perhaps he is not of this world.

Film facts

To advance to the 5th year, my task was to film a studio exercise - ideally an adaptation of a literary work. My directing classmates and I agreed that we would like to adapt a work by the same writer in our different distinctive styles. Of the proposed options, E. A. Poe. Although only three of the five directing students ended up filming his draft, it did at least partially unite us in the class. I wished to shoot something comedic again, which is quite a contradiction in the case of this author. So I borrowed a set of short stories by E. A. Poe's short story collection, and of all of them, only the short story Bon-bon seemed feasible in the conditions of the school studio, which I wrote with the dramaturge Z. Zelenka and I rewrote it into the genre of situation comedy. Since I was first approached to collaborate by my classmate Erik Žila, a cameraman and a top lighting designer, and since my classmates and my directing and camera teachers and I visited an exhibition of P. Brandl's paintings for inspiration in working with baroque twilight, we agreed to base our film on the contrast between light and dark.

According to the plan we were supposed to shoot in May, but due to my illness we had to postpone the shooting to the 2nd week of July. The new shooting date, although frustrating, helped our film in many ways: besides the support of FTV Prima, we managed to turn the school studio into a nice French pub in terms of set design, while significantly easing the budget in this category, we wisely chose to shoot in black and white (my first time at the school), and we got a first-class cast with minor changes. The role of the Gentleman/Devil was originally supposed to be played by the great J. Dulava, but after approaching about six professional adepts who had no time, I cast perhaps the best possible representative of the "lord of evil" - M. Táborský, who played the role brilliantly, and the role of the Young Man instead of D. Kadlec was played by Š. Tuček. In a slightly smaller cast (when e.g. The costume designer at one point also acted as a make-up artist and scriptwriter), even with two days of help from a foreign FAMU student as a lighting technician, and in the crazy three-day heat, when we were struggling and sweating under the stream of big intense lamps in the studio as well as under the stream of direct sun in front of the school, we shot beautiful (sometimes even expressionistic) shots in a unique atmosphere and managed to create special effects in a great and ingenious way.

Together with four other studio films of my year, adapted from literary subjects, it was screened with great audience success at the cinema Dlabačov as part of the second year of FAMORAMA.

Project website

Plácám, tedy jsem

ateliérové cvičení 2. ročníku

Highlights from behind the scenes

Galery from events