Sequence

Domlátil’s short animated film shows the daily rhythms of life at a speed of twelve frames per second. He works with real objects that we use in our regular lives or that we pass by without noticing them. Working with the textures, patterns and symbols he finds on them, he creates a visual continuity.

Technology as a silent witness to the permanent movement of celestial bodies... The light installation visualizes the arrival and departure of daylight as contemplation and a dramatic process. By condensing one day into a few minutes, it thematizes the passage of time and the cyclicity of natural processes.

Analogue film as an analogy for the physical world; the digital image as an analogy for the immaterial world. An experimental film that combines two substances to become an audiovisual imprint of our life within a space defined by material boundaries but that nonetheless possess the potential to “rise up” to the level of dimensionless.Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz - Out of competition

A metaphorical reflection on social exclusion using the participation method reveals the relationship between young Ukrainian Elizaveta and her mother, a dentist. A gritty analogy of an extracted tooth, social essentials, and spiritual purity play out on the screen as a conflict of alienating details and an intimate tableau of family life.

A film essay based on the conflict between decorative shots from a bird’s eye perspective and three mechanical, linearly-connected monologues dissects the subconsciousness of an individual saturated with a multitude of differing choices, opinions, and possibilities in the numbers-driven age of digital media.

Civilization at the Crossroads: The Scientific-Technical Revolution and the Future of Socialism in Educational Films of the Sixties The screening is a precursor to the exhibition The Self-Awareness of Science: The Scientific-Technical Revolution and the Limits of Emancipation, which will open in December 2018 at Prague’s Display and FUTURA galleries. The exhibition will look at the activities in the 1960s of an interdisciplinary research team led by philosopher Radovan Richta that was expected to present a vision for “the new Czechoslovak model of socialism.” The advent of cybernetics and automatization was expected to help create a more humane socialist society in which people would be liberated from manual labor and from preexisting ideological authorities and predefined roles. The exhibition, which is being prepared by a team of historians, curators, and artists, tries to find the fine line between the liberating potential of science and technology and their use for maintaining and cementing technocratic power or authoritarian regimes. Its aim is to reconstruct the interdisciplinary dialogue of the 1960s, which has recently taken on new meaning, in particular in relation to the subjects of automatization, a society without work, or climate change.   The screening is part of the project “Shape the Future! The Concept of the Science-Technical Revolution,” organized as part of the program “Strategies AV21: Europe and the State: Between Barbarism and Civilization” (Czech Academy of Sciences, 2018)  

This intimate essay presents the inner experiences of pregnant woman before and during childbirth. As she tries to come to terms with physical pain and as she mentally processes the situation, more complex questions arise as well. A documentary record mixed with questions and visions that reflect the mind and brain of a birthing woman.

An essay focusing on the topic of the exploitation of natural resources has as its primary theme water, showing its forms and changes in the chain of industry. The deep soundtrack is as dark as dirty water leaking from a power plant and, together with images of industry, evokes a sense of ecological anxiety.

In her short, emotional film about life after the loss of a loved one, the author enthrallingly deals with a difficult topic, using techniques of both feature and animated film. Real experiences of the narrators, accompanied by an animated reconstruction of the painful situation, create a mournful insight into the thoughts of three young people untimely exposed to death.

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

The town of Kyjov has two traditions: folk culture and methamphetamine. Dressing up in folk costumes is one of the things that the region of Moravian Slovakia is known for, but it is a façade funded from the municipal budget. Then there is the less idyllic reality of daily life, the status of men and women, and drinking at the 24-hour bar or in one’s basement. An exacting rhythmic film poem, shot and edited like its subject – traditionally, i.e., using analogue film.

This experimental film collage makes use of documentary, fiction and animated film techniques. The fading traces of childhood are mixed with the folk culture of the Haná region, all of it shot on 16mm film. The filmmaker thus preserves her chosen motifs, which are slowly but irrevocably disappearing from the present day.