Dispute Over a Pig

Jan Špáta / Czechoslovakia / 1981 / The film already had its Czech Premiere / 12 min.

synopsis

Meat evokes happiness hormones, but behind the gentle words “pork belly” or “neck” lies a meat factory where meat is divided, quartered, and cut up. With sharp candour, this critical morality play draws attention to the ecological, economic, and ethical implications of factory pig farming, and the striking contrast between the Czech culture of overeating, and starvation in Africa.

biography

Jan Špáta (1932–2006), cinematographer, director, and educator, studied photography at the Technical School of Graphic Arts in Náchod, and cinematography at FAMU in Prague in the 1950s. He began his career as a cinematographer at Zpravodajský film. He devoted himself to documentary filmmaking in the 1960s. His debut film, Největší přání (The Greatest Wish, 1964), was followed by Největší přání II (The Greatest Wish II, 1990) and Máňa (1992), co-directed with Olga Sommerová. Both later films were screened at the Ji.hlava IDFF in 2009. In 2018, his film Respice finem (1967) was also screened there.