a film by Jiøí Kylián
and Boris Pavel Cohen
with Sabine Kupferberg, Karel Hruska, Gioconda Barbuto, David Krugel
company Paradox
in collaboration with Duetto 2000 Roma

Car-Men is a black & white movie by choreographer Jirí Kylián based on four archetypical characters of Bizet’s Carmen. Shot in a coal mine in Czechoslovakia, with four dancers “between 40 and death” (Kylián), the work was mainly conceived on set and exclusively for the film. The main issue of the picture is an automobile of the Thirties, a plastic fantasy that reminds us of the futuristic Czech Tatra. The picture is a metaphor of time, speed, silence, youth and old age, while the story of Carmen is an ageless epic. The four dancers perform Carmen’s four stereotypes: Carmen, the eternal seducer, Don José, the man in love, Escamillo, the Latin lover, and Micaela, the good-hearted woman.Dressed as children, these characters relive their own past and tell their story in a surreal and tragic-comical way. Dutch composer Han Otten followed the musical aspect, with arrangements by Bizet and original music. The film was produced by NPS in co-production with ARTE and Ceská Televize, and with the collaboration of the Dutch Cultural Broadcasting Promotion Fund and the National Broadcasters.
“Since this story is timeless, since it already happened to its protagonists, since it is relived and interpreted once again now, and since this picture will survive its creators, for all these reasons we decided that nothing in the movie can be seen in time and at real speed. All sequences were made faster or slower. We want the audience to be aware of the time that passes through us in every moment of our existence!We thought the ideal setting for this movie was a place that had been degraded by human beings – a desolated land that can immediately arouse primal emotions:
1) chauvinism, narcissism, desire of fame and power… “everything is mine” - ESCAMILLO
2) wild love, unpredictability, impulsiveness, provocation completely dependent on sensibility, lack of control of personal emotions and lack of interest for the consequences. Seduction towards any one, including herself and the entire world around her! - CARMEN
3) the eternal Florence Nightingale, the Samaritan, it doesn’t matter whether she helps a murderer or his victim! She simply wants to be remembered as “…good…!” which is synonymous of being an “eternal victim”, since every situation she’s involved with ends up being a total disaster. Actually, she can’t help anyone, even less herself… - MICAELA
4) just as “Don Quixote”, he’s out to save love – not only for himself but for the entire humankind. Never offensive, he’s always positive but in his quest to save humanity, he could end up destroying even more than himself – DON JOSÉ”

devised, choreography, set and lighting design by Jiøí Kylián
music by W. A. Mozart
costume design by Joke Visser
film-video P. & p Lataster Films
video editing Rob de Groot-Vidishot
with Gioconda Barbuto, Sabine Kupferberg, David Krügel, Gerard Lemaltre, Egon Madsen 

company Paradox
in collaboration with Duetto 2000 Roma 

“We all have a birthday and we celebrate this event every 365 days… This is a cycle during which nature is born, dies and is born again, independently by our existence. We ask ourselves why we were born, what was there before us and what will be there after. But there are no satisfying answers, and there never will be. Ever since I was very young, I always had the deep feeling that our birth certificate was actually our death certificate (as Francis Bacon once said, “After all, we’re here to die”). I also thought that when parents conceived a child, in a certain way they metaphorically died: after giving birth to a new life, their own life became more meaningless, having already fulfilled their genetic duty. Sometimes, when our birthday arrives, we think about the day we were born but perhaps even about the day we’ll die (or be born again). Again, the cycle of a year has gone by, and nature germinates and becomes green and then blooms, at the heat and the sun, becoming mature and swell, and offers its fruit before facing the cold all over, once again – an imaginary “end of time” – but only to prepare its energy all over again to be born again. Between our birth and our death, we spend a lot of time and energy full of creativity, desires, love, and confusion… and during most of this time, we do nothing else but mock ourselves. Mozart, whose music I’ve chosen for this production, is the greatest example of someone whose time, between day “A” and day “Z”, was painfully limited but, nevertheless, he grabbed life in all its richness, fantasy, irreverence and madness. His spirit and the acceptance of the fact that life is nothing else but a “masquerade” or a costume rehearsal of something more meaningful, has inspired my creation.”
Jirí Kylián