Experimental venue Roxy/NoD, Dlouhá 33, Prague 1
www.roxy.cz

Friday 19.11.2010

10:30 a.m. - 1 p.m. William Longden´s workshop The Joy of Sound

The Joy of Sound is an inclusive musical workshop led by prominent British musician and therapist William Longden, founder of the non-profit organisation of the same name. For the past 10 years, William Longden has been helping disabled people by working with voice, breathing, and playing traditional as well as non-traditional musical instruments. He is also the inventor of several dozen specially constructed musical instruments enabling certain people to play who would otherwise be unable to do so as a result of their disability. Since 2000, more than 12,000 people with and without disabilities have participated in the inclusive Joy of Sound workshops in several European countries. Workshop participants use various techniques: listening, observation, mirroring, reflecting, searching for soft tones, working with rhythm and voice. Each workshop includes group improvisations which always begin and end in silence.

The Joy of Sound is intended for all those working in an assistive profession and their clients, pedagogues and their students, and last but not least all parents and their children, regardless of age.

Bring your musical instruments, if you have any!

Entrance fee: employed – CZK 300; students – CZK 200; ZP, ZTP, ZTP/P - CZK 50


7:00 p.m. Normal Festival Closing Party with a performance by Inventura Theater on the topic of The Little Prince
The closing party will be in the spirit of theatre, film and music. The first will be taken care of by the actors of Inventura Theater, the second by Inventura’s latest film about the pre-election struggle, and the musical part by the progressive DJs of Radio Wave. During the entire evening it will be possible to view selected films from the Normal Festival in a special installation and have a look at a specially compiled picture installation of photographic and non-photographic Art Brut works.

Inventura Theatre
Inventura Theatre’s vision is to become the first professional theatre troupe of actors and actresses with learning disabilities in the Czech Republic. It takes its inspiration from similar projects abroad with which Inventura has been collaborating for quite some time (Slovakia’s Divadlo z Pasáže, Poland’s Teatr troche inny, Hungary’s Baltazar, Germany’s Ramba Zamba) and which are established professional theatre troupes in neighbouring countries. At present, Inventura Theater is working on productions which attempt to take maximal advantage of the creativity of individual actors and actresses, and to provide them with the space to express their inspirational view of the world.

Film screenings:

Earthlings, Who Are You Voting For?
(Inventura / 2010 / Czech Republic / 40 min.)
Earthlings, Who Are You Voting For? is a documentary project created by people who have difficulty getting their bearings in the surrounding world and who probably did not excel in school. To be politically correct – they have a learning disability. This does not prevent them, however, from having an original and novel perspective on the world around them, sensitivity, curiosity and even audacity – all necessary traits of a documentary filmmaker. In Inventura’s six-month documentary workshop under the direction of Linda Jablonská, a film emerged which demonstrates that even people with a learning disability can get their bearings in public spaces and have a political opinion. The Dokumentalit crew followed a phenomenon which affects all of us – elections to the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic. They participated in pre-election meetings and recorded surveys with citizens as well as politicians on topics which in other media are unusual to say the least. External cameras captured everything that happened in the vicinity – the reactions of security personnel, supporters and opponents of particular political parties. The film crew also investigated whether political correctness and pre-election promises aren’t just empty slogans, and attempted to reveal the extent to which – 20 years after the revolution – a prejudice against everything that is not “completely normal” is still rooted in the Czech psyche.


Hope for Haiti
(Adam Koronka / 2010 / GB / 25 min.)
In January 2010 a huge earthquake hit the island of Haiti. 6000 miles away in London a group of people with learning disabilities decided to put on a concert to raise money for the earthquake victims. This is the story of how they came together to change peoples perceptions by showing that they can give as well as receive.

Pumpkin
(Adam Larson Broder, Anthony Abrams / 2002 / USA / 113 min.)
A definitive ironic full stop after the Normal Festival. A great B film without which there couldn’t be A films. A dark purple vision of the apocalyptic world of American schools. A parody of cheap sentimental films? Let’s hope so!
The always perfect Carolyn McDuffy and her sorority sisters have a plan – they want to win an annual charity award by training athletes with learning disabilities and preparing them to participate in a regional sports competition. Carolyn is assigned to Pumpkin Romanoff. At first she is horrified by him but she soon realises that the young man has something inside which she has never experienced in anyone else: tenderness, humanity, sensitivity and an internal purity which have a deep emotional impact on her. To the horror of her friends as well as Pumpkin’s mother, who tenaciously protects her son from the world, Carolyn falls in love with Pumpkin.

+ A selection of short films produced by Inventura

DJ’s - Radio Wave presents:
Exo-planetary Tango with STIMUL DJs or Chill Out with Harry Potter!
On Friday night the NoD Roxy space will be animated by the frenetic duo of Aleš Stuchlý (alias Nick “The Slasher” McGuirk) and Honza Vávra. The music critics and organisers of the STIMUL festival, known as promoters of new musical trends, are appearing this time as DJs Iva 8-bit and DJ Ultramilan.
In (non-)traditional costumes and accompanied by vuvuzelas, they will serve up audacious dance music, defective rhythms and delicious sonic swipes. The evening and night will resonate with delirious 8-bit preludes, mutated wonky honky tonk, alien electro and progressive northern combinations. Look forward to bizarre cosmic cover versions and exo-planetary mash-ups, psychedelic techno and unadulterated noise.
Fig-marigolds will bloom, carrion plants will blossom, syringodeas will swell! Hits generating primitive dance delight? Definitely! But also uncompromising and visionary sounds. Be sure to bring condoms and graphite sticks!