Roee Rosen: Kafka for Kids

As an accompanying event of the exhibition Crying until laughing, we will screen the film Kafka for Kids by Roee Rosen, which will be the Hungarian premiere of the film. Kafka for Kids takes the shape of a musical story, set to be the pilot episode for a television series that aims to make Kafka’s tales palpable for toddlers. Through this feature-length film, which retells Kafka’s classic story The Metamorphosis, Rosen raises complex topics under the guise of a kids TV-show. An unnamed grandparent figure reads the story to a child in a magical story-house, surrounded by characters like Ms. Lamp, Mr. Table and The Bearer of Bad News. These friends narrate the tale and perform the film’s songs while accompanied by a toy orchestra. Telling this story to a child is juxtaposed with reflections on how central law was in Kafka’s literature and life. Thus certain questions arise on both an emotional and imaginary level, as well as on a legal and political one. What is a child? Until when does a child remain a child? The film goes through its own metamorphosis which leads to an examination of the legal intricacies through which military law in the occupied territories defines childhood. However, even these harsh documentary materials are mixed with the personal and the erotic.

Roee Rosen (b. 1963) is an Israeli-American artist, filmmaker and writer, whose work deals primarily with the representation of desire and structural violence. He is known for his multilayered and provocative work which often challenges the divides between history and the present, documentary and fiction, politics and erotics. Using a vast array of fictional characters and iconographic motifs and codes, the artist refers to, and transforms, not only the canon of the historical avant-garde, but also popular media, political propaganda, and classic children’s fairy tales.

 

Rosen’s works were exhibited at Charlottenborg Kunsthal, Copenhagen (2019), the Arts Project Centre, Dublin (2019), the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2018), FICUNAM festival, Mexico City (2018), Documenta 14 (2016), La Roche sur Yon festival (2013), the Oberhausen Film Festival (2012), and the Venice Film Festival (2011). His movie Kafka for Kids was selected for the tiger competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2022), and he’s exhibiting at the Kunstmuseum Luzern in 2022-2023. Rosen was the recipient of the Orizzonti award for best medium-length film (2011); special mention at the Rome International Film Festival (2013); Best film award at Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival (2014) and was nominated for the European Academy award (2011), amongst being recipient and nominee for multiple other awards. Rosen’s two latest books were published by Sternberg Press, and he’s currently working on a book which is partly published by Steirischer Herbst. He’s a professor at Ha’Midrasha Faculty of Arts at the Beit Berl College and Bezalel Art Academy of Arts and Design in Israel.

Supported by: National Cultural Fund of Hungary, Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Haagse Kunst- en Cultuurprojecten