Robčerace

Evžen Plítek / Czechoslovakia / 1964 / The film already had its Czech Premiere / 6 min.

synopsis

This artistic portrait of the sculptor Hugo Demartini draws on the aesthetics of faded commonplaceness and peripheries: it is conceived as a wordless collage of object-based and figurative motifs from the studio and the adjoining courtyard, accompanied by the rhythmic music of the period. The film opens with the motto: “I like the rusty sheet metal nailed to my neighbour’s gate, or the old clockwork mechanism I found in a rubbish tip.” The title is explained at the end: “Robčerace is a made-up word that doesn’t commit you to anything.” The film is a third-year documentary exercise.

biography

Evžen Plítek (1938) studied documentary filmmaking (1961–65, graduated in 1966) and worked as a documentary film director; he received an award at AFO Olomouc for his short film Svět pro všechny (A World for Everyone, 1982), which explored the legacy of ethnographer A. V. Frič. He occasionally worked as a screenwriter and dramaturge on feature film projects (František Fenič’s Zvláštní bytosti [Strange Creatures], 1989).