Illustrative photo – The second day of the Venice! festival, July 29, 2022 in Liberec. Ivan Mladek
Prague – The documentary film Perspektiva Ivan Mládek, which will be shown by Czech Television on Wednesday, February 22, will present the well-known musician and entertainer primarily as a painter. Composer, lyricist, banjo player, singer, writer and screenwriter Mladka is also shown by director Patrik Ulrich as an artist who, with his typical humor, invented styles such as posunism, artistic drawing, anti-perspective or action minimalism for his paintings. The creators screened the documentary for journalists today.
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Mladek is the author of approximately 300 paintings, for which he himself invented the 'theory of inverted perspective'. “I'm not a painter, but a painting joker,” characterizes Mládek's artistic activity, one of whose works hangs in a bank building in San Francisco.
In the documentary, alongside a number of Mládek's close collaborators, the artist Jan Kavan also speaks, who recalled that Mládek's father Bohuslav was also a painter. “Dad took me and my siblings to exhibitions and to nature, but at the age of 17 I became crazy about jazz,” said Mládek.
Director and screenwriter Ulrich portrays Mládek as a Renaissance humorist. In addition to his painting work, Mládek could not be overlooked as a musician, author and performer of already popular songs such as the hit Jožin z bažin, which was also a great success in Poland, and the famous American metal band Metallica played it at their Prague concert. In a less well-known context, it shows Mládek also as the artistic director of the Banjo Band. “Ivan is a despot, but over time it became clear that it was necessary,” declared Banjo Band member Václav Dědina.
Zdeněk Svěrák also wrote several lyrics for Mládek's songs. “When we got together, we entertained each other,” Svěrák recalled. The documentary also captures Mládek's collaboration with actor Luďek Sobota. “He's the only person who can sing my songs,” stated Mládek.
The documentary portrait also shows the short period of Mládek's emigration after 1968, and similarly to Ulrich's previous portrait of Štace Miloňa Čepelka, the main protagonist goes to places associated with important episodes of his life.
The young man, who celebrated his 81st birthday on February 7, is the author of more than 400 songs. He worked in the groups Storyville Jazz, K.T.O., White Stars and Mustangs. In an interview with ČTK last year, he said that he is not planning any new songs. “We've already recorded a lot. It's too much, hundreds of songs. I haven't written or composed anything for about 20 years. It happens that sometimes I hear the Banjo Band somewhere and I don't recognize the recording at all. I don't recognize the music, the lyrics, or myself. And I don't have anything to do with my brain yet. I say. I only use it to come up with visual themes,” he said.
