Sequence

Anthony Bird is a war veteran who was the sole survivor of a military operation in his unit. His memories are as surreal as the animation which simulates the course of the incident in the form of a computer game. Everything looks flat but we must trust our own sensees which tell us that in reality, the world isn't flat.

Signum Supra presents art as a shamanic ritual, as an aestheticized tool materializing principles that cannot be grasped by consciousness. Gripping structures that resemble rocks and landscape contours float in indeterminate space, serving as a springboard for contemplating the patterns of perception beyond the visible and the tangible.

The experimental film Unknown presents prototypical urban motifs, such as public transport and escalators, transforming them into abstract black and grey fragments using rotoscope animation to the accompaniment of authentic sounds. Using these scenes, the filmmaker is trying to evoke in the viewer the subjective feeling of alienation in the anonymous environment of a city.

Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz - Out of competitionThe common denominator of the videos is the theme of therapeutic or relaxation exercise, the goal of which is to release mental and physical tension. In each of these works, however, a critical sting can be observed, honed by the frustrations of man in today’s world – whether they’re related to politics, interpersonal relations, or pressures at work. The transfer of these videos from a gallery context into a cinema changes the viewers’ experiences: the viewer is confronted with the images more urgently, they feel the tension building and releasing, and hence empathy with those observed.The series of videos was developed in cooperation with the Jindřich Chalupecký Society. Curated by Tereza Jindrová (Jindřich Chalupecký Society) as part of her research while organizing the exhibition Healing, dedicated to the topic of health in contemporary art.Prezentovaná díla:Migra jóga / Migra YogaCzech Republic, 2012, 10 min.Director: Markéta MagidováPrvotní promluva / Primal SpeechUnited States, 2016, 12min.Director: Liz Magic LaserNěkdy se cítí skoro šťastně / Sometimes They Almost Feel HappyCzech Republic, 2015, 9 min.Director: Barbora KleinhamplováSpolečně 2017 / Together 2017United Kingdom, 2017, 10 min.Directors: Lucy Beech & Edward ThomassonDvě minuty / Two MinutesCzech Republic, 2016, 6 min.Director: Jakub Jansa

Excerpts from a television interview with Eugène Ionesco in an adaptation of his absurd story The Colonel’s Photograph, which is dominated by the motif of a swimming pool that conceals drowned bodies. The visual pun is a compilation of techniques: animation, video, 3D graphics, and text, which give the seemingly random scenes a sort of structure.

Transforming the author’s film from the 1970s, the film trilogy captures a naked woman’s body in gentle motion iterations.  The combination of abstract expressionism and the figural motif uses distinctive colours, rapid shape-shifting and the dynamics of the human silhouette.

Happines. Sadness. A man. Life. A computer programme generates dozens of password images per second. The cell phone records the outside world into short clips. Their visual collage is accompanied by a voice-over – an interview of the director with a chatbot in an experimental documentary co-created by computer technology.

An interplay of horizontal and vertical lines, as well as other types of lines, found in in the public space, evokes a lyrical narrative combining them into a visual continuity in one image. Among found objects, events, and spaces, new relationships and continuations are created.

The author uses film as an art-therapy tool to cope with traumatizing experience of her own. Told from a child’s point of view, the story builds on the symbolism of both common and uncommon objects, a clay body, a writhing snake or a metal means of payment, projected into the narrative structure of repeating motifs.

An engraving by Josef Váchal and a text by writer Karel Klostermann have inspired the author to lament the endangered integrity of the Bohemian Forest, suffering from civilization more than ever before. The visual evocation of an old film suggests the timeless nature of environmental problems that have plagued the wild and lovely Bohemian Forest for a long time.

Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz - Out of competitionThe little-known Super 8mm films of Stanislav Hora (1959) from the 1980s are a little studied area of artistic film in our country. With his background in sculpture, Hora approaches film more as an artistic material – he uses it to animate the creation of sculptures, he draws on it, scratches and attacks its surface or uses it as a medium for art happenings. For Hora, film is a tool for expanding his artistic practice into other forms, a means for capturing visual processes or a kind of sculptural object. The Ji.hlava screenings are the premiere of newly digitized versions.Curator and author of the texts: Martin Blažíček (CAS FAMU)Digital reconstruction of the films: Lukáš Janičík, Emiliya VereshchaginaAudio mastering: Sara PinheiroThe films of Stanislav Hora were reconstructed at FAMU’s Centre for Audiovisual Studies thanks to the Academy of Performing Art’s institutional support for long-term conceptual development.Screening:BabraeCzechoslovakia, 1980, 6 min.Černý hadice / Black HoseCzechoslovakia, 1982, 3 min.Dobře posazená figura / Well-Positioned ModelCzechoslovakia, 1987, 3 min.Oko / EyeCzechoslovakia, 1987, 1 min.Pavouk / SpiderCzechoslovakia, 1987, 4 min.Kameny / StonesCzechoslovakia, 1987, 4 min.Fragment II – West BerlinCzechoslovakia, 1989, 6 min.FILCzech Republic, 2016, 5 min.

A metaphorical weather forecast portrays human emotions and sentiments in confrontation with contemporary social debates. The lightly satirical tone of the tv moderator’s presentation accompanies a video collage featuring a central motif of the Earth in which Africa is shrouded by clouds of existential questions and a spiritual crisis front threatens Europe.