Barta’s Golem

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The Pied Piper.

Jiri Barta is a great Czech animator whose 1985 film, The Pied Piper, is an extraordinary, hour-long re-telling of the familiar fable. In Barta’s version, the medieval town and its inhabitants are rendered as beautifully-carved, Expressionist wood figures, and Barta twists the story in a darker direction by having the Pied Piper turn the materialistic townspeople into rats.

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The Golem.

His current project is a film based on the old Prague legend of the Golem, taking Gustav Meyrinck’s classic novel as its inspiration. Since the collapse of the Communist regimes, Barta and other independent filmmakers have struggled to find financing for their more personal projects, which means that The Golem—which looks quite incredible—remains unfinished. This is especially ironic given that Prague is now a major movie-making centre for big Hollywood productions.

Kinoeye talks to Barta about The Golem and his other films, while Darkstrider has a trailer and clips from many other Czech animations.

Nova Swing

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The always excellent M John Harrison has a new sf novel out soon, Nova Swing, set in the same future as his masterful Light. You can read a sample of it on his website.

Harrison, along with Moorcock, Ballard, Alan Moore and Iain Sinclair, is one of Britain’s finest living writers. He’s the creator of one of my favourite fantasy cities, Viriconium, and author of a number of intelligent (and often disturbing) novels and short stories. He’s one of the few living writers equally adept at working with the big three genres—sf, fantasy and horror—whilst also being able to write straightforward “literary” fiction with far greater facility than the usual suspects that clog the Booker lists. The novels don’t come very often so a new one is an event, and something worthy of your attention.