Enter the Nightmare at Kino Aero – Jiří Flígl on the Shockproof Film Festival in Prague
I sit on tram number 10 and head towards Biskupcova. My phone lights up with a text alert; I’ll find him in the cinema office, he says. I get out at my station and turn to the familiar gloomy street, the big KINO sign luring me once again to Aero. But this time I’m not here for a screening. I knock on the door marked KANCELÁŘ.
My hand hovers over the handle when I don’t hear an answer, but then I seize it and peek in with one eye. I can’t see anyone. Step by step, I make my way through the corridor. “Ahoj,” says a voice from around the corner, and I jump up to the ceiling. But then quickly, in an attempt to cover that awkward moment, I reach out and shake the hand of Jiří Flígl, the manager of Kino Aero. “Wait for me in the foyer,” he suggests. “I will be with you in a bit.”
I stop by the Aero’s bar first and take my extra dry cider to a table. “Bleh,” I evaluate my choice after the first sip. “Hmm, actually not bad at all,” I reconsider after the second. In a minute, Jiří sits next to me, and I forget about my drink when he begins unfolding his story.
“There was this one guy who had a satellite dish.”
“I guess my passion for movies started at a very young age, at the end of the ‘80s. Unlike most people, my family didn’t have a VCR, which was for many the way into movies. But there was this one guy who had a satellite dish. And he offered people to connect to the same signal. So all of us neighbours had eight channels, two of them being Czech ones, and six of them being foreign.”
“But it came at a price. I basically didn’t grow up with Czech pop culture, because why would you watch Czech TV when there’s cartoons on the German speaking channels?… It was heaven! And I learned German,” he laughs. “Later we got our own satellite dish with more channels. Among them was ARTE, the German-French channel where they aired art films. So that’s when I saw my first Akira Kurosawa and Andrei Tarkovsky films.”
“I still can’t believe that I work here.”
“My enthusiasm for movies grew throughout the years. Of course, there were other sources, like film clubs, and also going to this place,” he sweeps his arms to embrace all of Kino Aero, and then lowers his voice. “I still can’t believe that I work here.” We share a laugh. “If somebody would have told me back in the early 2000s when I was going to these film club screenings in Aero that 20 years later I will be running this place… I wouldn’t believe that;” Jiří shines.
“So how does someone become the chief of Kino Aero?” I crack him up. “I got this job a year and a half ago. And one of the things that played a role was that I was familiar with the place and with the people who work here, thanks to organizing The Shockproof Film Festival for many years.”
Bingo! That’s what I came for.
To crack the case of The Shockproof Film Festival. “I’ll just look it up a bit because I don’t remember the exact years,” Jiří chuckles while scrolling through his phone. “The festival takes place annually for 16 years now, and it all started in…” he checks the screen of his device, “…in 2005. David Čeněk, who we consider the founding father of the festival, visited the San Sebastian Film Festival, and there was a special section devoted to extreme cinema. David came back very enthusiastic about the fact that there are festivals that aren’t screening only the high art.”
“It was probably in this very space,” Jiří looks around him, “where he was talking to Ivo Andrle who was running Kino Aero back then. David was like, ‘It would be so awesome if there would be a festival in the Czech Republic that would screen these sorts of movies.’ And Ivo said, ’Okay, let’s see if we can make that happen.’ And they did, and it was a success.”
“I joined in for the fourth edition,” he continues. “So that was in…” he looks down at his phone. “…2008. I knew David from Febiofest; I was doing the Far East cinema section there, and he asked me to join because he wanted to get some of the weird and extreme Japanese movies into the programme; it was something that people were talking about a lot back then.”
“What’s your role in the festival?”
I follow up. “The festival itself is specific in many ways,” Jiří begins, “And one of them is that we do not have an official festival structure. The festival consists nowadays of seven or eight people, and there’s no hierarchy. So I’m just one of the people who’s responsible for the festival.”
“It’s also a unique concept, that whereas other film festivals are organised by a specific company that rents out a cinema and runs their programme there, this festival is very closely linked to Aero, because all the investment into the festival goes through Aero. And it’s a continuation of the tradition of giving the opportunity and support to something that Aero feels is unique, has some energy, and has some potential. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but sometimes it can be a basis for something that lasts 16 years, and hopefully many more.” Jiří sets his heart on it.
“Nowadays, we organise The Shockproof Film Festival twice a year.”
“The main event is always around March, and then there’s the autumn special around Halloween. And in between the two festival dates, we have also added the Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings with the live shadow cast in the Aero programme. So that basically adds up to four events a year.”
“So how do you put the whole thing together?“ I don’t have the slightest idea. “Preparations for the festival start as soon as the previous festival ends. We sit around here at the after party on the closing day, and discuss the theme for the next year, and if there’s something that we want to do that we didn’t do this year.” Jiří starts walking me through the process, and I discover that about a month later, the festival team gets together again to confirm the theme. “This year it’s ‘outer space’. Somebody is appointed to be the person responsible for the theme. That means that this person will choose three or four films which will be related closely to it. And then we split up the responsibilities for the rest of the programme.”
“For all of the people, it’s a hobby, or even a passion.”
Jiří explains that this event gives an opportunity to its organisers to fully use their creativity. “Some of us work in television, some of us work in the academic field, and some of us work in festivals, or are film reviewers, or translators. And of course these jobs aren’t mundane, but they come with lots of restraints when it comes to what you, on a personal level, would like to screen. So in here — there are no restraints. You can just do whatever you want.” “That sounds amazing!” I exclaim. “It is amazing!” He affirms. “And that’s why people are very sensitive about how many slots in the programme they’re gonna be responsible for, because that’s their place to let off steam and to show their art.”
Jiří reveals that the festival always offers a selection of 16 movies. “We always have one classical porn film, some films which will be dubbed live in Czech, some new films, and some interactive screening.” I find out that after the crew divides the programme among themselves, they take their time to work on their slots individually. That usually takes about two or three months. “It’s usually fairly easy, because all of us have a lot of films that we want to screen at the festival. So we’re picking up stuff that’s lying on our shelves, and it’s just a matter of time till it appears in the programme.”
However, the team spends some extra time watching movies that could be a fitting addition to the theme of the festival. “We always want the programme to be balanced. That means that there’s always gonna be something that’s ridiculously funny, and something that’s ridiculously dreadful. And also some real classical films within the genre. We also like to have a variety in terms of countries of origin. The main aim,” Jiří sums up, ” is for the programme to be as broad as possible. And as varied as possible.”
After the team picks the right movies, comes the question of their accessibility
“Sometimes you can come up with an awesome selection of movies but you will not be able to get them. Sometimes because the rights are too expensive, or you are not able to locate the rights holder, or because you locate the rights holder and they say, ‘No, we don’t want this to screen anywhere in the world anymore.’ That happened a few times.” I chuckle, “They must have been proud of the movie.” “Weeell, sometimes you do understand.” Jiří smirks.
“And sometimes it’s just because of unfortunate events,” he continues. “Some of these movies are handled by big companies, some by really small companies, and some by one specific person. And if that person passes away, you’re in trouble. You don’t get a hold of these movies anymore. Either because nobody’s in charge of their email anymore, or because there’s the process of clearing who’s going to inherit what.”
“The fact that you don’t always get the films that you want; that’s just part of the deal,” Jiří, unconcerned, explains to me. “I’ve been working for other festivals for years, and you never get all the movies that you want. But you’re always trying to make the best out of it, so that the audience never feels there’s something missing; that some movie is there just because some other one wasn’t available. And sometimes it happens that you wait a few years, you get better contacts, you start longer negotiations with the companies, and then it works out.”
“The main thing I learned from the festival…”
“…is that if you are able to add value to a screening, it attracts people, and they appreciate it. If you just come to the cinema, sit down, see the movie and go, it’s perfectly fine. But you might forget the fact that you saw it, where and how. If you make an event out of it, and you get engaged in it, then it becomes something unforgettable. And it becomes an experience that 300 people have shared… if they fill the auditorium…” He laughs. “And then years later, people come to you and say, ‘Oh I’ve seen this here at this very screening, and it was so awesome.’” He beams.
“The festival is really close to my heart. And so is Aero. I devote myself to all the other weeks in the year the same as I do to the festival one. And it always ends up that you’re thinking to yourself, ‘If only I had one more week, one more week.’” Jiří laughs. “The festival just rolls and rolls… and then it’s over. And it’s just a blur. An awesome blur. It’s really incredible, because even though you invest so much energy in it, you get so much energy back. From the audience, from being there with them, from laughing with them, from screaming alongside them; it’s fantastic.”
“It’s a devotion, I guess.”
“This is something I’ve been always doing, it’s something that evolved from my hobby into an occupation. And sure, nowadays, I can’t make any distinction between free time or work.” Jiří laughs. “I always do something that’s related to movies or the cinema. It’s a devotion, I guess. Which comes with a huge level of responsibility. To the audience, and also to my colleagues, to give everything I have.”
“This is so heartwarming, it makes me happy.” I say. Jiří’s enthusiasm is contagious. “I love Aero; I always did,” he goes on. “And I always enjoyed the aura of this place, this specific cinema. You walk from the tram stop and there’s this dark street at Žižkov where you don’t know what you’re gonna step into,” he laughs. “And you’re passing all these people, and then sometimes become part of a stream of people who are heading in the same direction. And when you arrive at this place, you enter a whole different world, a world where a lot of people feel at home. Sure, Aero is old; you might not get the most comfortable chairs. But you’ll hopefully get something else. You get to see something that you don’t see anywhere else, or something that you’ve seen many times but never in cinema. And we make that happen.”
For a cult movie experience visit:
📍 Biskupcova 1733, 130 00 Praha 3-Žižkov
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