What a delight it was to be contacted by Greg Bachar, the Outreach Coordinator for the new film, Too Loud a Solitude. The film is based on Czech Writer Bohumil Hrabal’s beloved novella, Too Loud A Solitude (Příliš hlučná samota, 1976).
This is the first of Bohumil Hrabal’s work to be adapted by an American director. Hrabal is widely considered to be one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, and has had two novels adapted to film by director Jirí Menzel, including the 1968 Oscar-winning Closely Watched Trains.
Genevieve Anderson is an award winning director of such shorts as Boxed, Sunlight and Ola’s Box of Clovers, and she’s the one who is now bringing life to this story. Too Loud a Solitude will utilize live action puppets, animation, stock photographs and footage to tell the story of a waste paper compactor within a police state who has acquired an education so unwitting that he often has difficulty telling which thoughts are his own and which thoughts come from his books.
Golden Globe and Emmy winner and Academy Award nominee Paul Giamatti is attached to lend his voice talent to the main character of Hanta.
The 1940s and 1950s in Czechoslovakia were a horrific time. The Russian army and KGB (secret police) had ‘liberated’ the country following WWII and the Czech people were forced to witness the cruel takeover of their unique culture. Czech citizens were arrested, interrogated, sent to forced labor camps and uranium mines – some executed following ‘anti-Semitic show trials’ initiated by Stalin and his regime. Hrabal wrote Too Loud A Solitude as an unsentimental account of what happened to him during those times, focusing on the life of the lead character, Hanta (surely a hybrid of himself and the Eastern European everyman).
Many of Hrabal’s own books were banned, and many great books were physically destroyed, an act Hrabal characterizes in Too Loud A Solitude as “crimes against humanity.” It was his commitment to fearlessly chronicling the difficult and painful history of his country that makes him one of the world’s greatest writers.
Renowned contemporary video artist and collaborator Bill Viola describes Anderson’s work as follows:
“Watching Genevieve’s films, and the worlds they evoke, give me the distinct impression that I am seeing right into someone’s private inner world, a place where the characters and situations were the direct embodiments of the feelings for the events and not simply their visual, dramatic representations. This indicates to me that her impressive technical skill is in service to something else.”
The project is being supported by wonderful talent from all over.
Alex MacInnis wrote the script (This American Life, Down to the Bone), and the visual effects are being supervised by Evan Jacobs, whose magical work you have surely seen in Captain America, Ant Man, Avengers, and Alice in Wonderland.
Bohumil Hrabal’s poignant visual writing style has had wide-ranging influence on writers, including Philip Roth and Louise Erdich and it’s perfectly represented in this film.
Producers Steve Gaub (Beauty and the Beast, Unbroken, Oblivion), Kelly Miller (Forgiven, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), and Frank Rehak (Fulbright Fellow, Academy of Film & Photography – FAMU – Prague; Johns Hopkins University) are all poised to begin pre-production in the Spring of 2017.
Many of Hrabal’s own books were banned, and many great books were physically destroyed, an act Hrabal characterizes in Too Loud A Solitude as “crimes against humanity.” It was his commitment to fearlessly chronicling the difficult and painful history of his country that makes him one of the world’s greatest writers.
Fans of Bohumil Hrabal are being asked to support the project via the film’s Kickstarter campaign, which launched under the Sundance Institute’s curated page on September 27, 2016 and will continue through November 1st.
They are offering a wide variety of “perks” or “rewards” for your support and we’re on board to support them as well.
Here’s the trailer for the film…
Make sure to visit their Kickstarter campaign where there is a lot more information and visit their website to learn more.
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