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Princess in the Iron Mask
radiophonic composition, 16', 2014

The composition created for the 25th anniversary of the Czechoslovak Velvet Revolution is concerned with the topic of “iron curtains” of today, and by means of free fiction it reflects upon the specific realities of the relationship between the Czech Republic and North Korea after 1989.

Main inspiration were stories of North Korea refugees which were published in a lengthy article in the National Geographic, dated February 2009 – and especially the 2006 reports of the sociologist Marie Jelínková about North Korea women in the Czech Republic, as well as my own interview with Jelínková.

My template for the form is the non-verbal sound cinematography, i.e. films in which the leading dramatic role is given to other means of film speech rather than to words – camera shots, the set-up of the scene, action and movement, cut, sound etc. The form is also inspired by a contemporary popular genre of docufiction (documentary fiction) in which the authorial aesthetics is achieved by the director’s purposeful manipulating or influencing the recorded reality without necessarily setting up a clear border between reality and fiction.
In the composition, I work almost exclusively with sounds I recorded myself, some of which were grabbed at the true locations of North Korean laborers' stories (Khabarovsk, a Russian far eastern city, or a Czech town Beroun).

Premiered on the Czech Radio 3 station, on November 28, 2014. See the website of the Czech Radio 3.

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