Jan Kadlec
Jan was born in Prague on March 9, 1976. His father, Jan Kadlec Sr, worked as a movie producer. Jan studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in 1994-2000 and participated in many international exhibitions as an artist and curator. His works are also included in a number of major artistic collections.

Jan co-founded production company K Film (www.kfilm.cz) in Prague in 2008. Since then, the company has produced its own films while offering its services to Czech and foreign filmmakers. He followed this up with the founding of K Film swiss GmbH (www.kfilm.ch) in 2016, which cooperates with K Film and creates a complex international platform that develops scripts for feature films.
Jan worked on films such as Vodnik, the Market Garden trilogy, Modré stiny, Zrádci, Krev zmizelého, and Zatraceni.
He currently lives and works both in the Czech Republic and Switzerland, while also developing the plan to build a film studio in the Swiss canton of Ticino.

I never would have guessed that the charity performance of American Chick in Prague’s jatka78 theatre would change my life to the extent that I had this internal need to meet its creators. That’s where this interview with production designer Jan Kadlec, who currently lives in Switzerland, came from.

“I’m a rock.” That’s how Czech director Viktor Tauš’s play begins. The original film script won the Krzysztof Kieslowski Prize at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. Despite overlapping to the present, the main part of Ema Černá’s story that maps her experiences and feelings from the 1980s and 1990s is in the former Czechoslovakia where she grew up in an orphanage, in foster care, juvenile prison, and then life on the street.

A Tragic Fate

The play is inspired by the real experiences and story of its hero. Although it is partially a testimony about the appalling nature of institutionalized childcare under the communist regime that leaves its uncompromising mark on Ema’s life, it also gives hope, faith, and shows the strength of friendship and the will to live.

I was enthralled by everything: Petr Ostrouchov’s music, the set, the story that is terrifying, as well as the excellent performances of Eliska Krenková and Tereza Ramba, the two actors playing the single character.
And the Swiss connection? Jan Kadlec, the play’s production designer, splits his time between the Czech Republic and Ticino, Switzerland.
That’s where he wants to build a major film studio.

American Chick

You and Viktor Tauš seem to understand one another in the way you see stories. Amerikánka is an amazing project, and your set design is exactly what the play or film needs to express. How does a production designer come up with ideas?
Viktor and I have known each other for years and I think I can say we understand how the other one thinks. This work relationship is built on mutual trust. That means I know how far I can go. In any case, most times Viktor presents an early version of the script that we start to informally discuss. That ends in a discussion about life. You have to understand the story and confront it with your own experiences or an emotion we’ve had. You can’t do any kind of film without that. Then I go into my own world where I try to see where I can find a strong idea that’s waiting there for me; something that will help me put together the basic platform where I can start to build the visuals to tell the story.
Those are endless hours where minute-by-minute the visual of the entire film is put together. All that could then change at the last minute if the original idea isn’t right. Every detail is important: every colour, every material. Everything has its place, and every colour has its symbolism and meaning.
We use sets that represent various worlds where the story takes place. The approach to the work also depends on the medium. Theatre and film are very different.

Do you see yourself as a set designer? Isn’t that imprecise?

I don’t see myself as a set designer at all. I’m mainly a production designer, among other professions. That’s a position that doesn’t exist in our context, but it’s one of the most important. Film is visual form of art and the visual needs its own coordinator; a person responsible for the visual look of the film. Set desire is too misleading. A set designer is someone who creates sets for a theatre production. It’s the same as calling someone a film architect. That is more of an art director who is a trained architect and responsible for the technical realization of all the production designer’s visions. The production designer is a combination of an artist, architect, producer, and mainly a visionary. The position allows them to define the film’s visual appearance, sometimes even to the extent that an original colour film could be made in black-and-white if it improves the statement the film is making. This position is absolutely vital. It’s one of the most important creative positions together with the director and the scriptwriter.
Film is primarily a clearly defined world and not just the spontaneous capture of momentary experiences!

The story of Ema Černá went from being a play and then to other forms; Film nativo, theatre in film, and a book and film are being prepared. Which of these is closest to you as a production designer?
I’m always closest to film. I was born into film. Film is the essence of emotional image.
Each image must be able to perfectly replace exposition. It’s a gallery accompanied by sound. American Chick is a story I’ve been shaping since the beginning, from the original script that begins in Sarasota, Florida according to a true story all the way to the theatre production.
For the stage, I built a huge black monument, and that is the only thing that will appear in the film. Otherwise, film and theatre are completely different forms and should be separated.

American Chick is the pilot project from Layer-Cake. Can you tell us a bit about this project?

We were thinking about how finances put into film could go back into society. Most films are subsidized by the state, but it’s a closed world for a specific community – for film lovers. We would like films to create more value than just generating finances to cover the film’s production that could also be a boon to society elsewhere. That is why the Layer-Cake concept was created.
Specifically in the case of American Chick, artwork is being built to be used as sets and they represent a specific emotion from the film.
These works that people will see in American Chick the film will then be displayed in a prestigious exhibition space. They will be auctioned off and the proceeds will go back into society, in this specific case to education in children’s homes in Switzerland and the Czech Republic. American Chick is closely associated with children’s homes and financing them this way makes sense.
It should create other value than what the state gives us to call ourselves artists. Layer-Cake wants to inspire people to use films as a platform to create multiple activities and opportunities that will allow viewers and companies to invest into the development of society as a whole based on the film’s emotions. This concept thus supports the re-investment of public resources into society.

Life in Switzerland

How is life in Switzerland? What are you doing here for work?
I do what I know. I create the visual form of films as a producer and develop other projects. I work on many international films and Ticino is ideal for that.
Ticino has this massive energy, serenity, and an amazing atmosphere. It’s a place full of positive energy. I try to bring in my 27 years of experience as a production designer.
Besides American Chick and LayerCake, I’m producing an international comedy from English screenwriter and director Steen Agro that begins in Ticino and ends in Norway. It’s working title is Learning to Play. Then there is the fantasy Erilian, and a story about a theory of reality that will strive to use a very visual platform to ask questions about what is actually real in our world of seemingly various and mutually connected stories. Then we have a screwball comedy from the adult film industry that takes place in the Norway of the 1970s and contemporary Switzerland.

Ticino Film Studio

What were your impressions of Switzerland when you started living here?

When I woke up in Ticino for the first time and opened the curtains, I was flooded by this gorgeous sunlight. I turned to my wife and said: “Get up, it’s beautiful outside.” All I heard from her was “Close the blinds.” I tried again: “But the sun is shining so beautifully.” And then from the dark reaches of the bed I heard: “Baby, the sun shines here every day.” That’s probably where the idea for this grand project of Ticino Film Studio originally came from.

So the idea to create Ticino Film Studio is based on the realities of the region?

Yes. Ticino could be a sort of Hollywood in Europe. The vision of creating a film study in Ticino and the first world-class studio in Switzerland is based on the benefits the region offers, especially its fantastic geographic location in the heart of Europe, but it’s also southern and has a Mediterranean mentality. For example, Hollywood offers 200 hours of sunlight a month year-round. Ticino has eight months of sun like that, while the rest of the film world, places like Germany and England, have only three such months. Despite having advanced technology with excellent light sensitivity and perfect post-production capabilities, the sun still defines filming hours in the outdoors. You can work up to 12 hours per day here. Another aspect are the local universities, US and SUPSI, that could be a fantastic platform for future work in the film industry. There are schools of architecture, applied arts, business, virtual reality, etc. All those can be used as a great basis for work in the film industry.

Jan Kadlec on Swiss Trains and Landscape

“The fact they arrive on time isn’t so important for me. That’s more of a bonus. I fall into the local stories in the fantastic set design of the perfect world outside the window. This untouched and dominating landscape allows all of history and all the local myths and legends to unfurl. There couldn’t be a better set to tell these tales. This space that was never in the territorial crosshairs of ancient powers and has remained pristine because of the harsh and complicated terrain is simply divine.”