A Day of Life

Mum is. Mum lives. There’s a scar on her chest, but don’t pay any notice. There’s a heart inside that is beating. Metal against metal. A mechanical aortic valve to replace the one that was all used up. The heart beats on. The film poem gets beneath the surface, opening up the skin through projection. It shows a process that gives new life.

A montage of scenes exploring the meaning of existence, which during its brief stay on Earth finds itself controlled by a higher power, a parasite that controls all of Life, shaping it and determining time. Footage of thousands of chicks killed just hours after their birth alternate with scenes of a flowering summer garden.

Four consecutive linked symbolically imbued portraits of women of various ages – a 16-year old scout, a young mother of two, a mature woman, and a pensioner. In intimate proximity to the camera, each reveals their mental and emotional frame of mind and the current state of their womanhood.

A mini-portrait, treading lightly on the fringe of a gently parodic self-portrait, of the collector/gynaecologist/animal breeder/honorary consul/Dutch/Czech gentleman Oldřich Uttendorfský. Through the panopticon of an ordinary day, we are introduced to a man in whom languages, times, and cultures blend in a way that is difficult to analyse and interpret.‬

This film, shot on 16mm colour film, explores the life of a person who steals things according to written lists. He takes only specific things that people need – primarily senior citizens, single mothers, and other socially marginalized people. When is a crime a crime? Where does this modern 21st-century Robin Hood live, and what do his activities bring him?

Professor Jiří Myslík offers an engaging lecture on the physical criteria for capturing images on black and white media. His interpretation of the exposure of human skin is accompanied by playful illustrations that place the firm firmly in the celebrated tradition of Czechoslovak educational films.

"Igor´s Great Emotion is a game for one of the most talented post-1989 directors. Contemporary self-reflection of daredevil deeds mixes with reconstructed fragments of laboriously etherized memory. But by calling oneself a “spiritual seeker”, one cannot bury the sleeping demons forever – and so during clinical death, only instant spiritual séances can bring the director back. An attempt at laying off the sedatives and resurrecting a director who ostentatiously killed himself by publishing Diary, or: Death of the Director in order to make the world his empire through the inclusion of the occult." (Jan Strejcovský)

"For 40% of sick people, doctors are unable to determine what is wrong with them. In order to be able to treat such patients, they give them false diagnoses. My mother has had a headache for more than a year. She goes from one doctor to another and listens to their diagnoses. Each has his own way of seeing. None of them can help her. Who will this film help? Whose pain is it? Why does my mother have a headache and why am I making this film about her?" (Marika Pecháčková)

This portrait of the filmmaker’s grandfather, stage manager of the Laterna Magika and slightly eccentric intellectual, is stylised into a surreal performance. In a small space, the film builds an original formal structure that freely oscillates between playfulness and illustration, childishness and seriousness, the Buddhistic here and now and sharp patterns of thoughtful post-production.

"As opposed to the usual trend to be a narrowly defined specialist, in an attempt at understanding the world as a whole, biologist Daniel Frynta spans the fields of zoology, ethology, psychology, anthropology, ethnography, evolution, history, religion, and culture. However, there are so many things that it slowly becomes difficult to find time for his own life." (Andran Abramjan)

A young Russian patriot realises that the Czech Republic is the best place to start a career in the Russian intelligence services. She meets with famous speakers who can share some information about Russian spies working in Prague, and she does her best to contact the Russian Embassy to offer them her services.

With an international arrest warrant out on him, Russian artist Oleg Vorotnikov of the radical art group Vojna (Military Service), infamous for his politically engaged protest performances, is an alluring enigma for the young documentary filmmaking student. She attempts to learn more about him and his family through a series of (attempts at) meetings in Berlin and Prague.