2024-05-09 07:37:48
Petr Janda is convinced that a rocker should not show emotions on stage, even when he feels moved. In front of documentary filmmaker Olga Malířová Špátová, however, she sheds her hard shell and allows herself sadness, shame and compassion. “No topic was taboo for him,” the filmmaker appreciates. Her portrait of the Olympic founder, called Django, opened in theaters this Thursday, the singer’s 82nd birthday.
The rock band led by Petr Janda performed for the first time under the name Olympic in 1963. They named it after the club of the same name in Spálená Street. Since then, it has been playing almost non-stop, and director Malířová Špátová captures its history up to the present day. The group’s ups and downs are interwoven with the life vicissitudes of frontman Janda, whose band nickname Django is the name of the film. In it, the musician returns to his greatest successes, but also to the heavy blows of fate.
He did not refuse to talk about any of these things in front of the camera, although he postponed some filming – for example, the one at the cemetery where his prematurely deceased first wife and son lie. “It only took ten minutes, but it was not easy,” recalls Olga Malířová Špátová about the visit to the grave. Just as bravely, the singer stood up to the topic of normalization and appearing in TV variety shows, which he is ashamed of today. “He knows it’s part of his life and he can’t hide behind it. It says a lot about him,” says the documentary filmmaker.
She filmed with Janda for two years and got to know him as a person “who is still like a little boy and who is impossible not to like”, as she says. “Behind the hard rocker shell is a really good heart,” he thinks. On the other hand, he can be painfully cruel and honest. “How many times did he tell me what he thought of me or my work. I have the feeling that this is precisely why he kept the band together all these years. He was able to take ruthless steps, throw out his close companions,” he recalls, for example, about the fate of guitarist Ladislav Klein, who he received from Janda in In 1972, he resigned from the band. The documentary also features people to whom the singer had to behave harshly, yet they did not hold a grudge against him. According to Špátová, this also says a lot about his character. “They all came to the premiere as well,” he notes.
Close friends of Petr Janda approached her with the idea to film a portrait of a well-known musician and his band, similar to the case of her documentary Karel from 2021 about Karel Gott. “Great personalities came into my life by themselves,” he states. It was important for her that the singer’s entourage talked about the documentary on Olympic’s 60th anniversary; she knew it would give her creative freedom. Jando’s enthusiasm for the cause was also essential. “Whether a person is famous or unknown, it remains essential for me that he takes the film as his own and does not consider it an inconvenience that he has to film,” he says.
Already on one of the first shoots, she knew that working with the frontman of Olympic would be exactly like that. It was before Christmas, Janda and one of her little daughters were preparing a tree and cutting carp. “He was wearing a funny apron and wellies. There was a man standing in front of me who didn’t style himself. He didn’t care that he was disheveled and his house was a mess. That was a great freedom,” says Špátová. She complemented Jando’s authentic performance with forty Olympic songs, sensitively chosen according to the life stage the musician was returning to.
What is the relationship of the filmmaker herself to the music of the famous rock band? He remembers the notorious songs from scout camp, where they were played on the guitar. But she only got to the concerts during filming, and she was surprised that they were not just “commemorative”, she notes. “Of course he plays 60-year-old hits, but he doesn’t get stuck on them and moves on. He’s a young man and sometimes we’re not enough for him,” he observes. Janda himself ironically mentions that he is working on the new record “out of inertia, even if no one wants him to do it anymore”.
According to Špátová, the singer is still so energetic even after eighty because he has a wife almost 40 years younger and two young daughters. “He knows that he has to be here for them, that he has to stay a young guy,” he says. “I have an older man myself and we have a child, so it’s kind of the story of my life,” adds the filmmaker, who lives with the seventy-five-year-old cameraman Jan Malíř. Despite Janda’s youthful drive, the theme of the end of life briefly appears in the documentary. According to the singer, this is evident on his last solo album from 2022, aptly titled Asi se me nejde mi wanke. Spátová mentions that they talked much more about the end of life, but in the end it did not fit into the documentary, which is almost two hours long.
It was important for her to include scenes showing how the singer took charge of 12 Ukrainian women and children after the beginning of Russian aggression in Ukraine, even though some discouraged him from doing so. “They said that it divides society and that it doesn’t belong in a musician’s life. But in my opinion, it absolutely belongs there, just like the dramatic 20th century in which he lived. You then see him not only as an excellent composer, but also as a person who helps ,” says Olga Malířová Špátová.
Janda learned the basics of the language thanks to the Ukrainian refugees he sheltered for nine months. He is still in contact with women. “We sometimes talk on the phone, recently one of them invited me to Odessa for her daughter’s wedding. I objected that they are being bombed there. She replied that only sometimes,” the musician says. In the end, he did not decide to travel to the war-torn country. “War is bullshit,” he adds.
For Špátová, the most important aspect of every documentary is the generally human level, with which the viewer can identify, even if they do not know the famous musician. “There’s the theme of a breakup, the loss of a son and his closest friends. And also the temporary end of the band Olympic, because people stopped going to see them. I also caught how he talks about his mother movingly when he remembers her. Those are the moments I’m looking for.” concludes.
Video: The anti-charter is an unnecessarily complicated matter, says Janda
“There were a lot of us there, but we didn’t arrest or turn anyone in,” recalled Petr Janda on the 2018 anti-charter on DVtv. | Video: DVTV, Martin Veselovský