24th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival
Butterflies
synopsis
Young Alexei is openly homosexual. Although his peers have no problem with his sexual orientation, his mother is unable to accept it. This documentary portrait follows Alexei during summer break, as he spends time with his new lover Grisha, whom he met at a Tarkovsky festival. The film takes an unusual observational approach in that the camera is often right up against people’s bodies and faces during impassioned discussions, arguments, or testimony. As a result, the spontaneous and eccentric manner in which Alexei breaks down gender stereotypes are brought to the fore.
“Making a movie always goes hand in hand with fear and shame. This is because the film just now learned to dive into the man. Untill now it only described. During the work on the film Butterflies I always thought about it.” Dmitry Kubasov
biography
Dmitry Kubasov (1985) is a Russian actor and documentary filmmaker who has appeared in many renowned films such as Philippe Grandrieux’s Un Lac (2008). His past documentaries include the collective film Winter, Go Away! (2012) and the medium-length Tanya Number 5 (2014). His works are characterized by the close observation of people, inspired by his professor Marina Razbezhkina.
more about film
| director: | Dmitry Kubasov |
| producer: | Anastasia Murashkina |
| script: | Dmitry Kubasov |
| photography: | Dmitry Kubasov |
| editing: | Dmitry Kubasov |
| sound: | Zakhar Semirhanov |
other films in the section
The Turan tiger, a majestic symbol of the Central Asian landscape, has been extinct for several decades, but it lives on as a sacred symbol in the collective imagination of the local population. In her captivating film essay, Ismailova pays homage to this animal as she shows how firmly bound it is, in people’s minds, with the region’s history. The tiger is a spectre that emerges from the darkness and disappears again, the landscape is like a network of ruins buried under layers of the past. The collage of visual and audio fragments, accompanied by the filmmaker’s passionate commentary, shows that “real” history cannot be separated from shared ideas and dreams."The Haunted is an intimate video letter to the spirit of the extinct Turan tiger, which disappeared from Central Asia in the 20th century. Today, the tiger lives on in people’s collective memory." S. Ismailova
The Haunted
Saodat Ismailova
Norway, Uzbekistan / 2017 / 23 min.
section: Between the Seas
Central European Premiere
Until his violent death in February 2015, Boris Nemtsov was know as the face of the anti-Putin opposition movement. This intimate portrait brings us closer to his activities during his final years, when voices of protest became stronger in Russian society. The film does not portray grand speeches and gestures, but rather the daily activities of a politician, which included long business trips in addition to appearances in the media or at demonstrations, the everyday office routine, and discussions with people on the street. Nemstov’s close contact with social actors and the director are evidence of his courage and spontaneity, without needless pathos. “It is a film début, a documental tragedy. It took three years to make this portrait of Boris Nemtsov. Murdered in February 2015, the outstanding leader of Russian opposition is shown sympathetically, with humane warmth and irony.” Zosya Rodkevich
My Friend Boris Nemtsov
Zosya Rodkevich
Estonia / 2016 / 70 min.
section: Between the Seas
Czech Premiere
Day after day, images of film life in the author's collage glued together from fragments of feature films flow at a frame rate in which the date of the day appears in various forms. The original jigsaw puzzle shows what one year of diverse film footage might look like. The selection of scenes by calendar key is an interesting probe into the history of cinematography in different countries, a showcase of moods and diverse styles of film narration. The link between the selected scenes is a certain urgency connected with the realization of a specific date, whether such a date denotes a historical milestone or a simple act of brushing one’s teeth.
„365 Days' can be perceived simply as a recycled fiction story. As a video essay it discovers meaning of calendar dates for cinema and invites to think about life, memory and time.“ D. Bondarchuk
365 days, also known as a Year
Dmytro Bondarchuk
Ukraine / 2019 / 99 min.
section: Between the Seas
International Premiere
In this sensual film essay, the director has assembled her experiences with rituals in various corners of the world, from Europe across Africa to Latin America. The close interaction of the camera with bodies moving in trances encourages active involvement in the frenzied moments in which people lose themselves in Dionysian intoxication. These moments serve the filmmaker to obliterate the distance between the individual and the collective, personal and foreign, internal and external. The film, however, attaches a political meaning to the rituals, or rather shows how uprooted cultures cope with their minority status through rituals, or even turn it to their favor.
“I felt the urgency to work with video footage from years of different travels. During editing, I found myself thinking about the human necessity to impose meaningful patterns on life and being.” Koštana Banović
Among Houses and the Cosmos
Kostana Banović
Netherlands, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Portugal, Senegal, Brazil, Angola, Turkey, Gambia, Cuba, Serbia, Aruba, Netherlands Antilles / 2016 / 70 min.
section: Between the Seas
World Premiere
Andrej Bán is a journalist and photographer who reports from areas in crises around the world, the likes of which include Kosovo, Georgia, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Haiti, where he constantly travels back and forth. A director of his decided to accompany him with a camera, and their intimate conversations intertwine throughout the film, revealing the reporter's internal professional and personal struggles. The documentary follows Andrej in cities destroyed by war or in refugee camps, during which it becomes clear that he's interested in a deeper look inside the causes of the confl icts as well as the oppressive situations their victims find themselves in.“People forgotten by people. With photographer, publicist, and friend Andrej Bán we discover stories of people, who were forced to leave their homes.” J. Vojtek
Paradise on Earth
Jaro Vojtek
Slovakia / 2019 / 78 min.
section: Between the Seas
World Premiere
Professor Ioan-Matei Agapi, an 80-year-old photographer and cameraman from Iași, Romania, owns a unique collection of 16mm films and photographs documenting almost fifty years of the city’s history. His daughter, also a filmmaker, has decided to make a film about her father's archives. In the unconventional surroundings of his old apartment, he reminisces about the past until one day Ioan is informed that he must leave or be evicted from home where he has spent the past 40 years. Ioan’s years of work suddenly transform into a huge burden, and the film unexpectedly changes into drama in which conflicts with city officials reveal old and hidden conflicts within the family. "The deepest thing I learned whilst doing this film is that we are stronger than we think we are." N. Agapi
TIMEBOX
Nora Agapi
Romania / 2018 / 69 min.
section: Between the Seas
International Premiere
This poetic documentary presents one woman’s journey towards finding self-confidence, inner peace, and harmony. The filmmaker returns to Croatia’s Lika region, where her family comes from. In the bosom of nature, she tries to come to terms with the losses she has suffered in her life, her illness, and her fear of the future. The film is structured into six parts (prologue, spring, summer, autumn, winter, epilogue), each linked to a different stage of human life. It is a very open and intimate confession, framed in a mosaic of memories and experiences, thoughts and feelings. The film is also therapeutic, helping the filmmaker find the strength to fight. The film received the Croatian Oktavijan Award for Best Documentary Film.
“Every fear comes with the reason. To cure my fears I merged secret patterns and knowledge of my family with the cycles of nature. Through this collision I revealed what is the human in beasts and the beastly in humans.” Katarina Zrinka Matijević Veličan
A Two Way Mirror
Katarina Zrinka Matijević
Croatia / 2016 / 42 min.
section: Between the Seas
European Premiere
A history of the armed conflict in Kosovo, in which NATO forces also eventually took part, includes many heretofore unexamined events, including mass murders of civilians which the Serbian police attempted to cover up. Ognjen Glavonić’s poetic documentary presents shocking witness testimony and leaves it to the viewer to piece together the events of the time. Unsettlingly stunning visuals give the events a current dimension - long shots of the locations in which the atrocities took place create a symbol of surviving the past in the present that the inexorable forward passage of time usually softens.“By using light and sound, a combination of spoken testimonies and images of the places where the crimes happened, the film speaks directly to the sensations, imagination and emotions of the viewer.” Ognjen Glavonić
Depth Two
Ognjen Glavonić
Serbia, France / 2016 / 80 min.
section: Between the Seas
Czech Premiere
A foggy morning in a small Romanian town. Alexandrina returns from Canadian exile from Canada to her withering mother Mary, a former teacher who is being taken over by advancing old-people's dementia. The intimate moments of broken relationships oscillating between acceptance, compassion and helplessness creep into the fate of a nation disrupted by communism, progressing illness, and the increased feeling of loneliness of an aging woman surrounded by her childhood dolls. In a documentary approximation interlaced by internal monologues with her own (imaginary) daughter, we follow the complicated and anxious path to family reconciliation and towards the place of no return.
“I believe in a documentary that endorses questioning, anguish, and uncertainty.“ B. Stoica
The Irreversible Consequences of Slipping on a Banana Peel
Bogdan Stoica
Canada / 2019 / 76 min.
section: Between the Seas
World Premiere
What new things can we learn about ecology from science fiction? According to this video essay by artist Ralo Mayer, quite a lot. A flow of thoughts and analogies inspired not only by such sci-fi films as The Martian, E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Silent Running, but also by Biosphere 2, a project simulating an enclosed ecosystem located far away in outer space, have led the artist to reevaluate the way in which ecology is currently considered. For his new view of things, which relies more on a cosmic rather than an earthly perspective, the key concepts consist of humans as space travellers, robotic technologies, and extraterrestrials as apparitions whom we suspect exist in distant star systems."Ecology in outer space, far from our home planet, is literally unheimlich–uncanny, or better: unsettling. After years of research about Biosphere 2, I met E. T. & we talked Haraway in a Redwood forest." R. Mayer
Extra-Terrestrial Ecologies (Retroflectors: the astronaut, the robot, the alien)
Ralo Mayer
Austria / 2018 / 43 min.
section: Between the Seas
International Premiere
Yosef Yosade, a Lithuanian landscape artist, has worked for many years in Israel. His daughter Elżbieta has set the camera on him to capture the nuances of his creative process. Artfully framed static scenes of the master at work, in contemplation, or absorbed in discussions reveal the painter’s distinctive approach based on searching for the visual structure of a landscape. The director also presents visual depictions of landscapes in mutual conflict with their filmed versions, thereby linking the “abstract” and “concrete” perspectives. The film therefore reflects not only individual creation, but also examines the relationship between two specific media.
“The film relates the structure of a landscape to that of a human being. Unstable, arid, peopled by other creatures, by footprints from the past; those are features which Joseph shares with the desert he paints.” Elżbieta Josadė
Dialogue with Joseph
Elžbieta Josadė
Lithuania, France / 2016 / 42 min.
section: Between the Seas
World Premiere
The personality of a rural Transylvanian math teacher who teaches his students at home and ignores the existing curriculum, tells us not only about the Romanian school system, but also about society there as a whole. The stubborn elder man follows the words of essayist Constantine Noica, who believes that in an ideal school, there should not be any lessons, but rather students should go there to free themselves from the tyranny of learning. The observational portrait documentary monitors the dynamics of the lessons themselves, where, in addition to mathematics, the problem of education itself is addressed and where the teacher acts like a father fi gure.“I think that if you really want to make something matter within 100 years from now, then you have to educate people first.” A. Brendea
TEACH
Alex Brendea
Romania / 2019 / 82 min.
section: Between the Seas
International Premiere
