Original subtitles

Central Film Office Prague presents

a film by the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts, Prague

THE WEEK STARTS ON FRIDAY

A city means people, houses, but mainly streets.

We spend a third of our lives on the street.

But there's no time for rest or sleep

with so much hustle and bustle.

Yet the street slows us down with every step.

It's tempting, enticing.

Stop, look here!

From early morning, there's a car show.

Here, a reading room for the frugal.

For jazz fans, the pavement is their dance floor.

For book lovers, here's Kafka's latest edition.

Just in! Sold out...

How about a theatre show?

Free entry for the young and the old.

Should you be an admirer of a literary muse,

the street has something for you,

a special treat...

The best gallery,

the best exhibition that would make Rubens turn pale with envy.

3 x 8, 5 x 12 metres,

everything hand-made and painted on canvas.

A marquee sounds like a remnant of feudalism.

But don't be fooled.

It's just a fancy name for cinema billboards.

Master painters don't dream of eternal glory.

In terms of efficiency, they strive to maximise use of material.

Quiet, please.

We're at a workshop now.

Let the muse speak.

The work is complete.

The marquee is on its way to the audience.

Every week on a Friday, there's an opening.

But there's no art historian to make a speech.

No review being written for a newspaper.

No proclamations of socialist realism.

It's somewhat quiet around this cultural event.

Day after day, hundreds of people pass by

oblivious to the mammoth gallery above them.

Anyhow, the master artists aren't hoping for any grand awards.

Their ambitions are rather modest and practical.

If there's anything they're hoping for, it's a curious audience,

attracted to the box office by their art.

But reality can be cruel sometimes.

The triumphant glow of moving neon heralds a new era.

It's the end of the marquee.

Technology replaces the human hand.

In a few years or even a few months,

the last marquee will be laid to rest forever in a marquee cemetery,

lying alongside its long discarded predecessors,

becoming a junk market, a burial site of artists' illusions.

A distant memory.

THE END