- Occupation
Director - Country
France
Neumann Stan
A House in Prague
In his youth an anarchist and an agitator, later a zealous communist and even later a critic of Klement Gottwald, but mostly a famous and successful poet; Stanislav Kostka Neumann was all these things. Since the 1890's, his family has owned a villa in Olšany in Prague. This house was later the meeting place for an anarchist literary group, and the magazine New Cult was established here. Over the century which has passed from this time, the house has known several generations of the Neumann family, their loves, fights, separations and divorces. Actor Stanislav Neumann lived here, who is well-known for his role as the king in the Czech fairy tale Pyšná princezna (The Proud Princess); yet less known is the fact that he was a passionate Stalinist. Having regained ownership by restitution, today the descendants of S.K. Neumann live in this house and they have been trying to return it, one of the oldest in Žižkov, back to life. Director Stan Neumann, grandson of the famous poet, tells of the history of his family home and his family, but also of the whole nation, how it developed from the First Republic through the war, through the long period of communist rule and up to the post-revolution period.
In his youth an anarchist and an agitator, later a zealous communist and even later a critic of Klement Gottwald, but mostly a famous and successful poet; Stanislav Kostka Neumann was all these things. Since the 1890's, his family has owned a villa in Olšany in Prague. This house was later the meeting place for an anarchist literary group, and the magazine New Cult was established here. Over the century which has passed from this time, the house has known several generations of the Neumann family, their loves, fights, separations and divorces. Actor Stanislav Neumann lived here, who is well-known for his role as the king in the Czech fairy tale Pyšná princezna (The Proud Princess); yet less known is the fact that he was a passionate Stalinist. Having regained ownership by restitution, today the descendants of S.K. Neumann live in this house and they have been trying to return it, one of the oldest in Žižkov, back to life. Director Stan Neumann, grandson of the famous poet, tells of the history of his family home and his family, but also of the whole nation, how it developed from the First Republic through the war, through the long period of communist rule and up to the post-revolution period.
Born in 1949 in former Czechoslovakia and based in France, Stan Neumann started his film career as an editor and makes inventively constructed documentaries on culture and history. Has made over 30 documentary films/series, including: The Last Marranos (70', 1990); Rainer Maria Rilke (52', 1997); A House in Prague (70', 1998); Norman Mailer's America (3x52', 1998-99); Apparatchiks & Businessmen (52', 2001); L'Expressionnisme allemand (65', 2005); Buren et le Guggenheim (60', 2006); The Hidden Life of Masterpieces - Rembrandt (43', 2009); La Photographie surréaliste (26', 2009); Stargazer, (90', feature film produced by Les Films d’Ici / Arte Cinema, 2010, release planned for spring 2011); Les Primitifs de la Photographie (26', 2010). Since 1994, along with Richard Copans, he has been in charge of the TV collection Architectures (Arte/Les Films d’Ici/Musée d’Orsay/Musée du Louvre/Centre Georges Pompidou/Dapa). So far 40 films (x26’) have been made, Stan Neumann has directed 17 of them.
Documentary at Its Best - Conference of Discovery Campus and IDF - 2004