An initiative of the
Breathless. A Documentary Film Project /
Vùng biên giới. A Theatre Project with Rimini Protokoll /
rádio d-cz. A Radio Art Project /
Vùng biên giới. A Theatre Project with Rimini Protokoll /
rádio d-cz. A Radio Art Project /
Retrotopia
Radio play / Author: Steffen Irlinger
(WDR/DLR 2009), 53 min
Broadcating dates:
08.06.2009, 23:05 (WDR 3)
23.06.2009, 23:00 (WDR 1Live)
30.09.2009, 21:33 (Deutschlandradio Kultur)
> Sample clip
A pilot lands with his rescue parachute amidst the fogs of Zlín, a village fallen out of time. By trying to find his way round, he hits upon the story of shoe baron Tomáš Bat’a, who strove to implement his utopia of an ideal industrial town there.
The background:
The 12th of July 1932 saw the death of charismatic entrepreneur Tomáš Bat’a, when his private jet hit one of the chimneys of his own factory. From 1910 into the 1930s Bat’a had reshaped his Moravian home village Zlín into an industrial model city. His workers were accommodated in small modern houses with gardens, he had schools, hospitals and research institutes built, and he also invested in film studios and state-of-the-art factory facilities. The success story of the Bat’a dynasty can be read as a prototypical cultural phenomenon of the early 20th century: the fusion of megalomaniac tendencies with a strong belief in modern technology, social utopias and a distinct personality cult that resulted in gigantic projects of urban development. Bat’a’s “utopia in stone” can be seen as a modern variation of the architectural and social utopias of Renaissance sovereigns. His ideal city, functioning on the principles of Fordism, developed concurrently with the ideas of the “new sobriety” school of architecture in the vein of Le Corbusier.
The radio play:
Steffen Irlinger’s radio play “Retrotopia” is set in present times. A pilot lands with his rescue parachute in the fogs of a village fallen out of time. The inhabitants welcome him as their saviour and keep him from leaving town, since they take him for the long awaited “Šef”. He has no choice but to find out what this town and the mysterious “Šef” are all about. The radio play reconstructs the story of Zlín and its charismatic founder with a mixture of archive material, fictional scenes and interviews: a friendly man leads the pilot through a labyrinthine archive, a mysterious narrator soliloquises about the modern era and the responsibility of the industrialist, while contemporary witnesses talk about their work in the factory. Layer for layer, the pilot works his way through the sediments of urban myths, of fairytales and industrial history until he finally uncovers the secret of Zlín and its founder. Steffen Irlinger transforms the distinctive atmosphere and the music of Czech animated film into a radio play. In his piece the author illustrates the contrast between utopia and undeniable facts, between political entanglements and the extraordinary flair of a town in the Czech Republic.
STEFFEN IRLINGER
born in 1967 in Eberbach/Neckar, lives in Cologne. He works as a DJ, author and music supervisor for film and radio and is a member of the avant-pop-trio Donna Regina. The titles of his recent radio plays are: “Copy/Right” (WDR 2008), “Mingering Mike” (WDR 2008), “Paradise Garage. Die DJ-Legende Larry Levan.” (WDR 2006), “Supa Sistaz, Redux - Ein Waxploitation-Hörspiel” (WDR 2004) and “Kick it!” (WDR 2002, together with Tom Noga).
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