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The Origin And The Lion

The Origin And The Lion

(Počátek a lev ), Ondřej Vavrečka / CZ, 2009
Czech version, 124 min

THE ORIGIN AND THE LION is an experimental documentary about the search of the origins in the country of the lion – in the Czech Republic. The script of this film consists of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Each of them stands for a certain image (e.g. the head of a bull, a house, a camel, etc.). These images, formed by the varied substantiality of our country, then subsequently appear throughout the film and thus constitute its “story”. Since the documentary was shot in 2008, it also reflected the events of other important years containing the number eight: 1918, 1938, 1948, and 1968. They enter the film according to the order in which the particular months marked by these events follow in the calendar: February, August, September, October. The axis and the half-axis.

The film begins with the arrival to the hill Říp, where Čech, the forefather of the Czechs, meted out our country. We delineate a temple on the ground plan of twenty-two circles, then we proceed to the places where the bull (and the ox) was imprinted, which is the film-pendant belonging to the first letter of the alphabet – Alef. Then the day of the army in the military area Bahna, Vyšehrad (by a short roundabout way), Šárka – the cliff of the Maiden wars, the hillock Erš where according to a legend, Tyr, the hero of another war was buried, on the way to the small town of Počátky (“The Origins”), where we start our search for the Origin, and when we find it, we think of the human soul and we try to search for the centre of the world – physically. In the area of the Czech Republic. Čech leaves for Karlštejn, then the gate of Písek and the Wenceslas Square and the ruins of Výstaviště and a burial place from the 5th century in Prague-Zličín. Then cooking of something good, which doesn’t even get eaten, and then a song...

The film features: the Cabalist (Ladislav Moučka), the astrophysicist (Jiří Grygar), the biologist (Jiří Sádlo), the theologist (Milan Balabán), the metallurgist, the writer (Otomar Dvořák), the fishermen, the artiste (Karolína Heřmánková), the firemen, the mayor (Tomáš Chalupa), the camels, the grandmothers, the political activist (Jan Šinágl), the Czech (Vladimír Čech), the teacher, the comparatist (Vendula Neumannová), the antiquarian (Lubomír Samek), the archaeologist (Jiří Vávra), the aeronauts, the polyglot (Jaroslav Formánek), the mother, the speleologists, the archer (František Hegedüs), the dean (Michal Stehlík), the guru (Tomáš Pfeifer), the gourmet, the custodian, and the alter ego. And others.

The filmmaker, Ondřej Vavrečka, will make a personal appearance at the screening!