A man is searching for someone named Josef Kilian who is proving elusive to say the least. Whilst searching he passes a 'rent-a-cat' shop, goes inside and duly rents one. When the time comes to return it he finds the shop is no longer there. Concerned with being charged a penalty for an overdue cat the man goes from one official to another and trudges along an endless maze of corridors to no avail. Still lumbered with the moggy he recognises a man in a restaurant who resembles Kilian. This turns out to be 'mistaken identity'(or is it?) and when the other man gets up to go he too is carrying a cat.
Written and directed by Paval Juracek and Jan Schmidt this bizarre, surreal piece takes us into a Kafkaesque world in which anonymity is the norm and people are resigned to living under a crushing bureaucracy. Is it coincidental that the leading character in Kafka's 'The Trial' is named Josef K? I think not.
Although not an easy watch this is a highly inventive piece with excellent sound effects and suitably anarchic music. Kuracek and Schmidt have crammed as much as they can into its thirty-eight minute length.
Juracek had been treading on thin ice for years and the biting satire of his 1970 film 'Case for a Rookie Hangman' proved too much for the Czech authorities. It was banned and so, alas, was he!