Wonderful men with cranks

The show refers to the title of Jiří Menzl’s film about the beginnings of travelling film art. The reference is conscious because Adam Walny uses the technique of manual cinema in the performance. Both the content of the performance, which is based on Andrzej Waligórski’s cycle of poems “The Mad Knight”, and the peculiarities of the technique of manual cinema (shadow theatre) and the film of the famous Czech director have nothing in common. The performance itself consists of several etudes linked by the common protagonist Zenk Dreptak, a figure who is present in Waligórski’s work in different illustrations (in the author’s contemporary version and in medieval costume) and perfectly exposes the vices and problems that are ubiquitous in our reality.