Buffer Zone Blues

A poetic short portrait of the Ústí region of the Czech Republic. Using experimental means of expression, the director creates a hypnotizing study that combines natural and urban landscape motifs into a multi-layered dynamic collage. The film was shot on 16 mm stock and was created without the use of visual effects.Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz: Out of competition

Happines. Sadness. A man. Life. A computer programme generates dozens of password images per second. The cell phone records the outside world into short clips. Their visual collage is accompanied by a voice-over – an interview of the director with a chatbot in an experimental documentary co-created by computer technology.

The slow movement of various species of insect in an abstract, brightly lit setting creates suggestive allusions to incontrollable chaos, apathy, and the decay of social structures. The minimalist visual imagery is accompanied by ambient music that works with realistic sound and static. 

In this short film, animated natural objects express the artist’s inner world: an unending search for new ways to do projects, searching for hidden meanings, and overcoming the fear of experimentation. The film’s central motif is, however, synesthesia as experienced through the fusion of physical sensory perceptions.

In a world where wildlife loses its place, there is a need to replace it. The allusion to a trailer advertising the soft green moss ball breaks down the distance between the sterile human habitat and the sea plant popularized as an organic element of any home.

A portrait of sunlight, created on 35mm film negative using a camera obscura built by the filmmaker. The camera records a plant from morning to evening at several-minute intervals. The sequence of images compiled from these photographs create a cinematic sundial.

Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz - Out of competitionThe common denominator of the videos is the theme of therapeutic or relaxation exercise, the goal of which is to release mental and physical tension. In each of these works, however, a critical sting can be observed, honed by the frustrations of man in today’s world – whether they’re related to politics, interpersonal relations, or pressures at work. The transfer of these videos from a gallery context into a cinema changes the viewers’ experiences: the viewer is confronted with the images more urgently, they feel the tension building and releasing, and hence empathy with those observed.The series of videos was developed in cooperation with the Jindřich Chalupecký Society. Curated by Tereza Jindrová (Jindřich Chalupecký Society) as part of her research while organizing the exhibition Healing, dedicated to the topic of health in contemporary art.Prezentovaná díla:Migra jóga / Migra YogaCzech Republic, 2012, 10 min.Director: Markéta MagidováPrvotní promluva / Primal SpeechUnited States, 2016, 12min.Director: Liz Magic LaserNěkdy se cítí skoro šťastně / Sometimes They Almost Feel HappyCzech Republic, 2015, 9 min.Director: Barbora KleinhamplováSpolečně 2017 / Together 2017United Kingdom, 2017, 10 min.Directors: Lucy Beech & Edward ThomassonDvě minuty / Two MinutesCzech Republic, 2016, 6 min.Director: Jakub Jansa

The audiovisual essay explores the Danish part of Jutland from the view of both a living eye and an inanimate object. The horizontal line of the water surface represents a penetrable borderline between the world of people and the world of nature, bubbling with rippling reflections of the outer realities while accompanied with wind, voice and silence blasts.

The philosophical dystopia presents warning outlines of the near future where modern technology will not be a sign of progress, but rather decline. Behind the layer of film images, there is a monster created by computer animation, whose abstract virtual body represents the invisible ideological administration.

Out of desire to prove the power of socialism, Marshal Tito had a railway line built across all of Yugoslavia. In the post-ideological 21st century, the counterpart example to his deed might be the modern-time Chinese megalomaniac Silk Road portfolio of projects. A video essay shot in Montenegro, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan and China brings out a perspective on the global vision of Chinese state-run capitalism.

A mysterious cinematic poem about remembering a long-lost summer afternoon. Disturbing abstract details of natural elements permeate the metaphor of a children's game, passing in a contemplative vision of the spiritual essence of light and darkness, in which opposites eventually dissolve into units of primal matter.

Stairs leading from nowhere to nowhere, narrow shafts, bridges, ladders from which we fall in our dreams. A string of raster photographs depicting different places imitates a course of dreaming, making the subconscious look real. Frightfully unfamiliar images from the archives of collective memory sneak into the most inward corners of our existence.