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Magical Petr Lébl

When he tapped on my shoulder, and on my life, in1992, it did not take him long to persuade me to cooperate with him and some others on a project called Kroměříž Studio (aka Studio K.) (I think the director Potužil was there with him, too). Immediately I felt comfortable, open and felt a friendly connection with him. He was pulsing with intensive energy and with a specific kind of tenderness.....

When he tapped on my shoulder, and on my life, in1992, it did not take him long to persuade me to cooperate with him and some others on a project called Kroměříž Studio (aka Studio K.) (I think the director Potužil was there with him, too). Immediately I felt comfortable, open and felt a friendly connection with him. He was pulsing with intensive energy and with a specific kind of tenderness. And so then we gradually started shooting Studio K. A bizarre community started around it, which was its core, but other people were catching up, according to the themes of particular parts. Lébl knew that in the Bílé Divadlo theatre company, acting improv was being cultivated and that I admired and used it. And since improvisation was one of the dominant elements of Studio K., this work immediately became a pleasure for my soul. Doing that was joy and playfulness and wit and imagination.

What was the greatness and charm of Studio K.?

Mystification.

Parodying gibberish discussions about something and nothing, as we know them intimately from today’s screen.

Conceiving of ideas on the spot – from a topic chosen by Lébl.

School of interaction.

Language esprit and inventiveness.

Flashes of wisdom within stupidities.

Seriousness within irony, the grotesque within the sublime.

Finding bits of gold within the blather to make our thoughts sparkle.

The spirit and sense of nonsense.

The strength and clearness of spontaneously spoken text.

The magic of the odd, and of intentional and unintentional humour.

Poetry, a very distinctive poetry…

Some young people from FFF asked me to help them after they decided to do Petr Lébl’s filmography at this year’s FFF. Namely, Jakub Felcman, the programme director of FFF, as well as Eliška Nováková, from the Faculty of Theatre Production at JAMU, and Vojtěch Mašek, from the Department of Screenwriting and Dramaturgy at FAMU (who was just finishing his theses on Lébl and Studio K.). I was very pleased by their idea. I’m glad that they accepted him, almost in a cultish way. But it’s right that they should do so. Lébl is irreplaceable, after him there is a 10 years gap. But thankfully he left us a wide and genius collection of works.

Prof. Miloš Horanský

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