April

A shop by the side of the road. One after another, people enter and exit the small building. The randomness and illogical nature of the action feels unreal. The sense of timelessness and of being in an unnamed place further heightens the dreamlike nature of the scene. The nearly motionless black-and-white camera records a fragment of life in a place torn from the context of the world.

The lost magic of postcards is explored on film in this FAMU student exercise. A mosaic composed of seasonal motifs and short messages illustrates the relationship of several people to Věra. The passage of time is shown only by the change in the heads of state on the postage stamps. Will the mysterious recipient be found?DETAIL:“My dear Mrs. Bechyňová, I found a box with 254 postcards in an antique bookshop on Spálená Street. They were all addressed to you and were being sold for one crown each. P.S. Is anything wrong with you?”

“Have you ever stepped on an anthill and not given it a second thought?” asked a military drone pilot. Intimate stories of professionals about their routine everyday job: monitoring the movement of targets on the ground. Accompanied by almost meditative images from a drone’s perspective, the film poses an ethical dilemma regarding the consequences of pressing a single button.

Nomads in the seas of Indonesia say that when a women gives birth to a child, she also gives birth to its twin in the form of an octopus. A look at a cultural environment shaped by traditional folk beliefs. The camera follows a man swimming with his face submerged in the sea in a ritual honouring the octopus. Dishonouring your aquatic brother can lead to misfortune.

This silent portrait of a multipurpose compound that serves as a storage site, maximum security space, and luxury showroom slowly turns into a bizarre black-and-white science-fiction movie with the building as the main character. Despite its abstract nature, the meticulously composed rhythmic combination of austere, carefully framed shots lacking any other context is a fitting architectural commentary on the spirit of our era.

The film is a skit on the parallels between a caretaker and a security guard embodied by the character of a young man who keeps watching over everything all the time. Repetitive and automated everyday tasks are accentuated by monotonous aesthetics of the camera and a slow-moving pace, introducing the audience into the world of Korean pragmatic mentality and sense of responsibility. 

In a single take lasting several minutes, the film shows the village of Hladivode (whose names means “Cooling Waters”) near Sarajevo. After a slow tracking shot across an orchard, the camera zooms out to show a group of men engaged in conversation. They are filling in the bullet holes on a ruined building – a reminder of the recent events in the Balkan peninsula’s turbulent history.

The films confronts two different views of the execution of General Ion Antonescu, Romania’s leader during the Second World War. On one side is silent black-and-white footage of the execution as recorded in 1946 by cameraman Ovidiu Gologanl; on the other are scenes from a biographical film shot in 1994 by director Sergiu Nicolaescu.

A documentary study of the eye and its functions. A compilation of images from various places gives the function of the eye new meanings. It is a tool for instilling fear, the soldier uses it to find his target, and looking into the eye of your executioner can cause him to doubt his actions. What happens when the eye stops looking?

Using simple animation with outline figures and objects against a dark background that evokes nightmares, an anonymous 16-year-old youth, a repeat offender at a correctional facility for juveniles, recounts his criminal past caused by traumatic experiences with domestic abuse within his family.

This minimalist six-minute film looks at the creation of animal life through time-lapse footage of an embryo’s development – a process universal to all animals, including people. The film follows, in microscopic detail, the development of an alpine newt in its translucent egg all the way from first cell division to moment of hatching.