Kafka for Kids: The Script

The pilot episode of a TV series that perversely aims to make Kafka’s tales palpable for toddlers.

Roee Rosen’s film Kafka for Kids is set as the pilot episode for a TV series that perversely aims to make Kafka’s tale “The Metamorphosis” palpable for toddlers. In its title, the film Kafka for Kids implies that the intellectual great of modern literature will finally be presented in a way that is generally understandable. Roee Rosen wants to present Franz Kafka, of all people, with his contorted thought constructions, in a way that is even accessible to kids! But unfortunately, that’s not how things turn out: the star writer of the educated middle class is not simplified, but his story becomes much more complex, corresponding to reality, for reality is more complicated than we like to represent using biaxial graphs. 

Featuring the original script of the movie, readers are invited to dive into a magical story, followed by essays that give a deeper insight in the literary aspects of Roee Rosen’s oeuvre. A stowaway on the journey, Rosen playfully and with wonderful self-irony does not negate the complexity of the present, but takes it to the next level by exploring how all things are interlinked. Rosen neither doubts the complexity of our reality, nor does he oversimplify to a fault.

Published by Sternberg Press and Kunstmuseum Luzern.

Roee Rosen (born 1963 in Rehovot) is an Israeli multidisciplinary artist, writer and filmmaker. He studied philosophy and comparative literature studies in Tel Aviv University from School of Visual Arts, New York in 1989. Rosen received MFA from Hunter College in New York in 1991. He is a professor at Beit Berl College in Kfar-Saba and at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. His work has been shown national and internationally and was featured at Documenta 14.