Jirí Kylián: «Car Men»

Jirí Kylián, you have been working on your film, “Car Men,” for quite some time? Well yes, it’s a funny story really; it actually started by simply playing with the name Carmen, dividing it into two words, car and men. So through the division I came to the idea of cars and men. I discovered through Czech television that the earliest recording of Bizet’s “Carmen” (dating from 1908) had been made with Ema Destinnova in the title role; she was a famous Czech singer and a partner of Caruso.

Listening to this recording I decided to visit the Dutch Film Museum where I gathered together these fantastic films of slapstick car chases which I decided to use within the choreography. What started to an extent as a joke is actually, in combination with the slapstick humour, a much more complex and absurd project. We have in the film these four archetypes: Carmen (Sabine Kupferberg), a restless woman who always wants to be amused, and manipulate others – basically a she-devil but with a soft heart; then we have “Florence Nightingale,” Micaëla (Gioconda Barbuto), who tries to please everybody and gets hopelessly entagled with ther personal conflicts; and of course we have our two men, the ...