Alois Nebel: between reality and fiction

It´s the end of the eighties. Alois Nebel works as a train dispatcher in the small town in the vicinity of the Polish border, a job he has done for many years. The normalcy of his everyday life is brought to a halt after an encounter with the deserter Voloda. After this fateful meeting, Nebel is haunted by hallucinations. The present merges with the complex and dark Central European past and Nebel starts to loose himself in the newly-instated opaque dualistic reality.

An exhibition documenting the shooting of this iconic Czech movie, an adaptation of the self-titled graphic novel written by one of the most successful Czech writers of the new generation Jaroslav Rudiš together with musician and artist Jaromír 99, whose opulent black and white illustrations only accentuate the mystique, starts on Thursday 29 September 2011 in Prague´s Langhans Gallery.

According to the authors of the pictures, film photography in this case was deemed futile since the parts played by real actors were recreated by animators anyway (a technique called rotoscoping). Similarly to the film itself, the photos hover between the real and imagined, a snapshot of inter-reality that´s dreamy and enigmatic.

Published September 28, 2011.