Marco Polo: Million

The narrative of the famous Italian medieval traveller, who became a courtier of the Mongol Khan Kublai, still captivates today with its colourful depiction of the lands of the Far East. The Venetian traveller and novelist Marco Polo (1254-1324) was originally a nobleman. In 1271-1295 he travelled to the Orient with his father Niccolo and uncle Matteo. Through Syria, Persia, Khorasan, Turkestan and Mongolia they arrived in 1275 at the summer residence of Kublai Khan in the Cathay Empire. Marco Polo was then governor of the province of Yangzhou for three years, and for seventeen years was entrusted with missions, so that he travelled through a large part of the Khan's empire. In 1291, all three Poles returned to Europe by sea. Polo's travelogue is the song of a traveller who intensifies his feeling of life at the thought of the wondrous lands he has discovered. This epic exaltation of his own personality, an expression of bourgeois individualism, is linked to the practical spirit of the 13th-century Venetian, the embodiment of the bold activity, economic strength and political power of the Italian city. The million is, among other things. A merchant's book, written for merchants, and can be read as a rare document of the merchant mentality. Marco Polo reports on a "different" world, and this was undoubtedly the reason for his success: presented Europeans with an image of civilization that did not fit into medieval socio-cultural schemes. Performers: Rudolf Pellar, Miroslav Středa, Pavel Soukup and Igor Bareš Directed by: Hana Kofrankova