Petra Hůlová, Petr Vrba, Jiří Havlíček

Alfred ve dvoře / czech / 60 min

A multi-genre auto-fiction documentary about cabbage fermentation with elements of a political essay. I, Kimchi is a story of a trio of friends, passionate home producers of the Korean fermented cabbage kimchi. The creators perform in it using their real names because the documentary essay on the border of three genres (Petra Hůlová: text, Petr Vrba: music, Jiří Havlíček: video) is a kind of auto-fiction. The fermentation of cabbage is for them not only everything that matters in their life, but also a "true reflection" of today's society. The story, with flashbacks to the years spent together when they were young, is a record of the emergence of a community that begins with gourmetism and ends with a vision of social order. They use the changes at the bacterial level that occur during fermentation as a useful metaphor for the functioning of society. While we use the impossibility to self-regulate wildly proliferating bacteria that die after having exhausted the resources of their environment in the barrel as a parallel to our society, the interconnectedness of our body with our bacterial not-self opens up an important topic of symbiosis. The theme of fermentation in the Czech context has already been introduced in this interpretive way by the project Fermentation by Petr Vrba and Radim Labuda, which the new production builds on and further develops. The group works with artistic hyperbole, self-stylization, and irony. They combine absurdity and humour with the language of the internet, various manuals and cookery recipes. The tension of the textual part comes from the story itself, as well as from the contrasting use of diverse means of expression and communication of music, image and a word.

Authors and Performers: Petra Hůlová, Petr Vrba, Jiří Havlíček
Light Design: Pavel Havrda
Dramaturgical Collaboration: Johana Ožvold

Photo by: Martin Špelda

More info: HERE

Tickets HERE

Supported by: MKČR, Státní fond kultury ČR, Praha 7