Magdalena Rutová studied at the Illustration and Graphics Studio at Umprum. She is the founder and only employee of Linostock, the first lino etching photobank (www.linostock.com). What she likes best is making portraits, drawing and etching, preparing art education, writing, and dreaming up non-profit business plans. She is the author of comic strips on The Expert and His Admirers. Irregularly she records the secrets of growing one’s career in Diary of a Female Entrepreneur.

Sketches and here and there, runs dilettante literary events. Since graduating from Juraj Horváth’s studio at UMPRUM she has excelled at illustrating works of all kinds. In breaks between freelancing she herself is a sponsor and publisher; a future professional scholar in the field of risograph postproduction; an amateur enthusiast also in further branches, including alchemy, cooking, Hebraistics, mycology. In 2018 Lucie became a holder of the BRaK award, which included a residential stay in Nová Cvernovka, during which she created The Book of Calm.

She grew up in a family of natural scientists, which formed her from early childhood and refined her talent for observation. In her work she applies classical graphics, especially screen printing and lino, but she also likes to experiment with other techniques. Her works were chosen for an international festival of illustration held as part of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and have also been presented in galleries in Japan. At the festival she is exhibiting her illustrations from a new book for children, produced with the writer Monika Kompaníková.

The graphic designer and teacher Palo Bálik came up with the idea of producing an edition of the best final works by students of the Department of Visual Communication at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design (VŠVU) in Bratislava, published as books. When referring to the best works, we do not only have in mind their quality of expertise and level of research: most important of all is their originality, innovative quality, creativity, and provocative (and maybe also controversial) spirit. These are creative study projects, and the knowledge they produce through analytic and critical thinking in graphic design is part of progression in the Visual Communication Study programme.

Doors are opened to the festival and the exhibitions in the spaces of Nová Cvernovka

During the last 30 years of freedom the countries in the Visegrad zone have evolved differently, but currently one can perceive a number of common features in their development. Being tired of freedom, or social melancholy?   

Four leading European writers in the festival’s opening discussion present their views on the current politico-cultural activity in Central Europe.

Jana Beňová SK, Radka Denemarková CZ, Aleksander Kaczorowski PL, Ferencz Czinki HU

Presenter: Michal Havran

Klub Cverna

A trio founded by the singer and violinist Nina Marinová. After long and short travels Nina returned to Prague, where together with musicians whom she admired she got a band together and named it after her greatest fan – her Granny. A year and a half later they have played concerts and festivals in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria, made a live appearance for Czech Radio at the Prague Spring, issued two singles, and won a nomination for Discovery of the Year in Radio Head Awards. Their songs let you feel their love for music and travelling. Real and imagined languages criss-cross here, as do real and imagined styles. Currently the band is completing its debut CD, to be issued in the autumn. Violin and vocals:  Nina Marinová, accordion: Michal Mihok, guitar: Štefan Szabó.

Park de Palma

A drama about a woman whose whole life collapses in a single moment and who must find a way to start anew. Nathalie (Isabelle Huppert) is a teacher of philosophy at a Parisian secondary school. She loves her work, and especially she very much likes to share her delight in thinking with her students. She divides her time between her husband, two children, her former students and her propertied mother. One day her life partner of many years announces to her that he is leaving her for another woman. Nathalii has no other choice but to adapt to a hitherto unknown loneliness... and a recovered freedom. Nathalie comes to terms with her new situation by an introspective acceptance of loss. What gives her a certain security is philosophy.

All of the films by the French director Mia Hansen-Løve have thematic motifs of loss and melancholy. The characters find themselves in limit situations. However, the tendency to affective dramatisation is countered by a dramatic subtlety, where the rhythm of the film world seems to have copied the rhythm of reality. “I am obsessed with the flow of time and pervaded with terror at the fact that life is passing somehow beyond me. I have a feeling that it’s like water trickling through my fingers. It escapes so fast and I never have any way of grasping it,” Hansen-Løve has said.

The screening will be presented by the film critic Matej Sotník.

The film is brought to BRaK by Film Europe Media Company.

Desant Film Hub

Groovy psychedelic postrock with poetic texts and a flavour of the ambient. The Slovak-Czech band Ankramu is a grouping of noteworthy musicians from differing musical projects, whose speciality is live concerts enriched with experimental improvisation. Their current album Si teraz skôr ako zem (Right Now You’re More Like the Earth) is a reworked recording full of song and instrumental currents, structures and layers, accompanied by sensitive vocals that do not seek to lord it over the instruments.   Ankramu’s songs have an enchanting breadth, feeling and richness. The formation is composed of singer and lyricist Michal Kramár, drummer Jozef Krupa (Stroon), bass guitarist Lukáš Mutňanský (Katarzia, Fallgrapp), and guitarist MichalMatejka (Cluster ensemble).

Klub Cverna

35 small and medium publishers, who have accepted an invitation to BRaK, offer the best and the latest of their book production

Nová Cvernovka spaces

The identically-named stage adaptation of Marek Vadas’s book Escape is a cheerful story of the wandering of a little girl. Abroad in the world, she experiences new, often bizarre and even absurd situations. The main motif of the drama is her wish to learn how to run quickly and then to use this capacity to the full in her wanderings. Thanks to her fast running, our heroine gets away from many dangerous situations. However, lurking in this ground-plan of a witty and amusing narrative about fast running, there are topical, bitter issues of the present day. The story is actually the journey of a small refugee who with a child’s naive eyes looks at the laughable world of adults, their ridiculous commands and laws, their incomprehensible attributes.      

Creators and cast:

illustrations: DANIELA OLEJNÍKOVÁ

videoart: MILAN ONDRUCH

costumes and requisites: DÁŠA KRIŠTOFOVIČOVÁ

actors: MILOŠ KUSENDA, ANDREJ ŠOLTÉS, HEŇA VIRÁGOVÁ

direction and music: RÓBERT MANKOVECKÝ

This production was supported by the Slovak Arts Council from public funds.

Klub Cverna

Chrudoš Valoušek got himself on the world map of illustration twice. In 2010 he won the award for World’s Most Beautiful Book at the Leipzig Book Fair, and this year he gained the principal award of a Bologna Ragazzi at the Italian Book Fair. For work in his distinctive and recognisable style all he needs is, in his own words, “a bit of lino and a penknife”. Joining him on the stage is his publisher, the graphic artist and teacher Juraj Horváth and the scriptwriter Vojtěch Mašek, who worked together on the Czech version of Pinocchio: Puppet, snout, plum, log, and puppet again (Panáček, pecka, švestka, poleno a zase panáček).

Klub Cverna

Velvet Quiz

The whole family’s competing

Come for a quiz! Join up with any team or form your own and remember the year 1989. How much do you remember of it? How much do your children know? How did the Velvet Revolution run its course in Slovakia? Who were its principal heroes? The quiz on the Velvet Revolution was prepared by Soňa Balážová & Ján Púček in collaboration with E.J. Publishing. Winner’s Prize: One member of the winning team will become a sketched character in a comic book in the series Velvet Comics, which is published this year by E.J.Publishing. Attention! Each team must have at least one child and one adult in its squad. Age doesn’t matter. We look forward to seeing you!

Workshop: My Favourite Comics Story

At the comics workshop you can transform your favourite stories into short comics with illustrations. During the workshop screenplay writer Soňa Balážová and illustrator Dávid Marcin will say something about what comics are and what different types of comics we know. However, if you don’t fancy drawing but love to read, there will be a heap of comics there for you to browse through.

The workshop will be led by Soňa Balážová and Dávid Marcin.

For children 10+, but adults too are welcome to join in.

Workshop: Me as a Comic Book Hero

The workshop is intended for those who would like to create their own comics. Screenplay writer Tereza Oľhová and animator Mária Kralovič will say something about how comics are created, what the rules are, and at the same time something about the fact that rules don’t exist and that comics can be made even on your normal journey to school. No limits are set to imagination. Each participant, with help from the lecturers, will create one page of comics on a theme of his or her choosing.

The workshop will be led by Tereza Oľhová and Mária Kralovič.

For children 10+, but adults too are welcome to join in.

Zborovňa

A mysterious district in the middle of Prague, where the electricity doesn’t work, has attracted masses of readers. Prašina (Scab) quickly became a hit in the Czech and Slovak book markets – a film adaptation is in preparation. At the same time it opens questions: what kind of literature is designed for children, what kind for teenagers and what kind for adults? Is there a borderline between what is suitable for one group or another? Should books for the teen public be instructive and educational? This is one of the themes for discussion by Vojtěch Matocha, author of Scab, who has been nominated for the Magnesia Litera Prize in the category of literature for children and youth, also Miroslava Varáčková, author of popular young adult novels; also involved will be book editor Erik Fazekaš and translator Zuzana Trstenská. The presenter will be Peter F. 'Rius Jílek.

Klub Cverna

Sándor Márai, Péter Esterházy, Imre Kertész, László Krasznahorkai – even this quartet of Hungarian writers is proof that Hungarian writing has long been part of the canon of European literature. Do present-day Hungarian writers also avow this tradition? Face-to-face, we are given a report on Hungarian literature in the 21st century by the prose-writer Benedek Totth, author of a book which has been compared to Trainspotting, slammer and writer Zsófi Kemény, and transgender poet Kiss Tibor Noé.

Klub Cverna

The literary readings Between the Lines present contemporary Slovak writers, joining one established writer with a young writer – interlinear. On the lines of this concept, appearing at BRaK are the poet, prosewriter and jury member of Between the Lines Petr Borkovec and the award-winning writer Lucia Čurillová.

Kabinet pomalosti

Come on out, sketch, etch and print. Lino etching reportage.

For children from 7 upwards

Zborovňa

A discussion on genetics and race, but especially about those people who for incomprehensible reasons were declared to be the crown of all creation. The well-known Dutch reporter Frank Westerman, here as part of a European tour, presents his personal historical reportage The Pure White Race. He tells us the fascinating story of the Lipizzaner horses. Against this background the modern history of Europe is mirrored: wars, ethnic conflicts, the history of dressage, and also questions of race, genetics, and stories of the greatest discoveries in these fields. Westerman lets himself be guided by the history of the Lipizzaner horse breed and weaves unexpected connections of European history into it. After you have read The Pure White Race, you will look quite differently at the white stallions in Topoľčianky. The presenter will be Samo Marec.

Klub Cverna

A year ago, when after a long silence his slender volume níl, úvod (nile, introduction) was issued by the Czech publisher Fra, it was a poetic sensation. Erik Jakub Groch is a poet of unique recurrence. For years he has been living, so to speak, at a remove from civilisation. The festival organisers therefore could have had no idea that an opportunity would fall to them to publish the second part of an expected poetic tetralogy, and with a title that fits well with the theme of the festival. His collection melanchólia neviem (melancholy I don’t know) will appear in a limited series at BRaK. EJG, among other things, will also present an edition of the books he is publishing together with Juraj Kuniak.

The presenter will be Viktor Suchý

Kabinet pomalosti

Postman is a Ukrainian musician, multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter. By his own testimony, his greatest influences are 1960s music, especially Donovan, Nick Drake and Gene Clarke, together with the writings of Hermann Hesse. Last year Postman issued his second album Everything Is New, which is an example of a transformation of folk music heading from the peripheries to the big cities.While one can feel the influences of Bob Dylan and Donovan, mixed in with a modern urban sound, on the other hand his music always breathes the spirit of Eastern Europe.

Postman has performed at the largest Ukrainian festivals. With the rock band 5 Vymir he issued the album Novi Imena, which was designated one of the best albums of the year. With his fellow-musicians he has given concerts with such bands as Franz Ferdinand and Balthazar.

Park de Palma  (or if the weather is bad, in Klub Cverna)

When the Iranian poets Fatemeh Ekhtesari and Mehdi Mousaviho were sentenced by an Iranian court to 99 whiplashes for shaking hands with a person of the opposite sex, and in total to 20 years’ imprisonment for “insulting the sacred symbols of Islam”, over 100 poets signed a petition for their release. Eventually they were able to escape illegally from Iran to Turkey, where after a year they were taken in charge by ICORN (The International Cities of Refuge Network), which offers protection to artists who hace immediate danger in their own countries.

Before their forced departure from Iran they were both acknowledged artists with a number of poetry collections. What was their (artistic) life like in rthe country which disclaimed them, and what is it like to publish books and a journal under the threat of imprisonment?

The presenter will be Rado Sloboda (Amnesty International)

Klub Cverna

The heroine comes to a new city: in Angela Schanelec’s films this is often of central imoprtance. They remind one of a sparely written diary, dense with information, where the writer with the passage of time crosses out everything that he sees as excessive in terms of subjective survival.  That might include essential parts of the narrative. Emerging from this is a film with many ellipses, which seemingly doesn’t even take the viewer into consideration. It’s almost as if we were furtively looking at some sort of notes or pictures which do not necessarily make sense. They hold my attention, even though I do not understand everything.

Leaps in space (France, Germany, France), and in time, which is protracted and also drastically abbreviated, sudden digressions by the characters into seeming by-ways, from Czechoslovak heroes to those whom we meet daily on the street without noticing them. The art of noticing: that’s the first requirement for a viewer of the film which won a place among the elite of European film minimalists for Angela Schanelec fifteen years ago. The screening will be presented by the film critic Alexandra Gabrižová from Kinečko.

The film is brought to BRaK by the Goethe Institut and Deutsche Kinemathek.

Desant Film Hub

The Mucha Quartet is one of the most prominent chamber formations in Slovakia. It has received recognition at home and round the world. Since 2013 it has been almost a regular performer at the Bratislava Music Festival. It was there that in 2018 the quartet premiered Vladimír Godár’s Music for Martin Šulík, which comprises compositions for films by that leading Slovak director. Šulík’s films Tenderness, The Garden, and Landscape (Neha, Záhrada, Krajinka) are probes into the soul of the ordinary person who finds him/herself in strenuous life situations. Vladimír Godár’s music underlines the psychic disposition of the heroes, or sometimes ironises it, thus casting doubt on the supposed gravity of the events and giving the films a melancholy character. His compositions will be heard at the concert, performed by the Mucha Quartet, together with works by the late romantic composer Ján Levoslav Bella – Nocturno, 2nd movement Melancholy, and Coda, a composition by Martin Burlas. We will also hear a Slovak version of what is said to the most melancholy composition in the world, Szomorú vasárnap (Unhappy Sunday), originally by the Hungarian composer Rezső Seress. The arrangement for Mucha Quartet was done by the artist Katarína Máliková (translation of the text by Vlado Janček), who together with the Mucha Quartet will also present a new composition from her eagerly awaited album Postalgia.

Park de Palma (if the weather is bad, in Klub Cverna)

In 2011 Jakub König, author of comics, blogger, songwriter and musician, put his debut album MENU on the web under the pseudonym Kittchen, and on the alternative scene it built up a decent response. His subsequent album RADIO won an Anděl, and the third, KONTAKT, was successful also. In seven years of artistic existence Kittchen has been collaborating with stage and film, experimenting with video, exhibiting paintings and remixing. But what most listeners praise especially is his powerful concerts, whether solo or with the drummer and second half of the heart of the band, Tomáš Neuwerth. Kittchen comes to BRaK with one of the prizewinners of the Czech Republic’s young electronic scene, the producer and DJ Aid Kid and VJ show.

Klub Cverna

Ondrej Mikula aka Aid Kid stakes his live sets on improvisation of his own tracks, a combination of emotive beats and graduating structures. After his first two singles he got to be talked about in Czech parts. In April 2015 he issued a spendidly-received eponymous debut, later given an award by Vinylou. Aid Kid plays live, appears as DJ, engages in stage music, composes spots, theme tunes, music for videomapping and interactive installations. At the present time he is active as the guitarist of the band Děti mezi reprákama (Kids Between Speakers). Kittchen is also part of the core of the collective An Animal Called Autumn.

Skrytý Bar

35 small and medium publishers who have accepted an invitation to BRaK offer the best and the latest of their book production

Nová Cvernovka spaces

THE DEVIL KOLOFÓN is an enjoyable performance for small and big viewers. This mix of devilish fairytales, folktales, pop culture, Wild West and romantic comedies is a recipe for matchless fun in the company of classical marionette puppets. The hero of the story, the devil Kolofón, has a hard time. Life is not just crawling out of the cauldron in Hell. His story of belatedly growing up begins when Lucifer sends him to Earth to bring back at least two disobedient children. The plot takes a dramatic turn when Kolofón meets Janko and Marienka, hyperactive children whizzing about on bio-food, who decide that they’re going to make a proper devil of him. This play will delight the smallest viewers with its dynamic gags, while having plenty of jokes and sly allusions for the adults. The performance had its premiere in 2015 and since then has had more than 100 repeats at festivals and events all over Slovakia, and finally the story of Kolofón has appeared in an extended book version.

Screenplay, director, puppet master: Peter Gärtner

Music: Radovan Hrbek

Suitable for children of 3 years upwards

Klub Cverna

Our grandparents’ fairytales were often dark: there was death in them, and cruel punishments. Charming little zombies and vampires turn up in today’s fairytales, but in a completely different rendering. How were those frightful stories reflected in us, parents of today’s little readers? Are we more conservative? Do we know how to handle books which offer themes that are made taboo in our society, such as death, birth and sex?   When and under what circumstances should we talk to children about difficult themes and how can books help us to do so?

Monika Kompaníková, writer, author of four books for adults and three for children. She has worked in the Artforum bookshop; currently she is working on a book edition for Denník N.

Martina Jánošíková, co-founder of EduDrama, a platform for dramatic education, and of the cycle Posvieťte si s nami na sny (Light Us the Way to Dreams). Currently she is engaged in storytelling and working with the society called On Track with a Story.

Markéta Andričíková, university literary scholar, UJPŠ Košice, who is involved especially with children’s literature, its history and reception.

Kristína Kállay is a graduate of the Cultural and Historical Studies study programme at the University of Brighton. She acquired a master’s degree in the field of Gender studies (Universität Wien, CEU Budapest). Kristína is a doctoral student at the Institute of World Literature in the Slovak Academy of Sciences. In her research she focuses mainly (but not exclusively) on children’s literature and postcolonial theory.

Klub Cverna

Book radioactivity for little artists. Radio BUCH is the bright idea and project of the artist Magdalena Rutová, founder of the first linotype bank, a loyal visitor to BRaK from its first year, when you probably couldn’t have seen it, because it was hidden in the Ateliér Automatique. Radio BUCH is a book from the Baobab publishing house, which includes an audio book and a sketching pad to go with it. Interactive fun, indeed, for child readers! We are guided through the individual chapters of Radio BUCH in sound recordings by an eight-year-old emancipated woman,  who thanks to her adventurous career growth in the course of nine chapters discovers that the majority of human professions are not to be envied. But the reader, or the listener, will have entered the book by then and according to taste may illustrate or retell the story or invent an alternative plot. Radio BUCH may serve also as an inspiration for work with children.

For children from seven years upwards.

Zborovňa

A resident of Kuřim in the Czech Republic wanted to put a camera in a newborn child’s room. By chance, however, he picked up a transmission from the house next door and was suddenly shocked. On the screen he could see a shot of a boy tied up. That was the beginning of one of the most bizarre cases our neighbouring country has ever experienced. Writer Marek Šindelka and illustrator Vojtěch Mašek reveal the background of the case, which is a mystery to this day. Was it child pornography or a religious cult? The Saint Barbara comics is among the best to appear in this genre in recent years.

The presenter will be Michal Hvorecký

Klub Cverna

When Ivan Štrpka met David Gahan in the early 1980s, something similar might have resulted. The new album Vision has been issued by the French synth-pop label Falco Invernale Records. This is the second time ImiAFan has chosen poems by Ivan Štrpka to set to music. On the first vinyl record The Blood of Black-and-White Photographs he collaborated with Martin Burlas and Ján Boleslav Kladivo.

Final rendezvous with the authors of texts Ivan Štrpka, Robert Roth and ImiAFan.  

Kabinet pomalosti

Launch of a children’s book by Monika Kompaníková and the illustrator Veronika Klímová.

Come and welcome to life the new children’s book The End of the World and What Comes After, by the author of Deep Sea Tales. We will “christen” it with the light rays which we tame at the workshop with Miriam Halamičková.

Mirka Halamičková – a Mama who in her educational activities moves on the frontier line between healing pedagogy and art. Monika Kompaníková – writer, author of four books for adults and three for children. She has worked in the Artforum bookshop; currently she is working on a book edition in Denník N.

Zborovňa

What is the current face of Hungary? The prominent intellectual and writer G. M. Tamás explains why the political situation in his country is ever more reminiscent of authoritarian regimes and is tending towards fascism. Tamás has long pondered the issue of the modern forms of fascism: what are they, and why are they gaining strength?

The presenter will be Jakub Jošt.

Klub Cverna

After 14 years Dušan Mitana had completed the last part of his projected novel series Testimony on the Transformation Process.

František Kovár reads from the manuscript of the prepared book “Missing Without Trace”.

Discussion: KK Bagala, Ivan Štrpka, Ján Púček and Daniel Hevier.

Park de Palma (if the weather is bad, in Klub Cverna)