24th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival
Every Tear
director: Sarah Vanagt
original title: Alle de tranen / Every Tear / Toute larme
country: Belgium
year: 2017
running time: 30 min.
synopsis
Armed with an ancient microscope invented in the 17th century by textile merchant Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the filmmaker travels through her native Brussels exploring everything she can get her hands on. The long series of subjective macro-details of strange shapes is accompanied by citations from van Leeuwenhoek’s letters.
biography
Sarah Vanagt (1976) creates documentaries, video installations, and photographs in which she combines an interest in history with film. Her previous film, In Waking Hours (2015), was premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.
more about film
director: | Sarah Vanagt |
producer: | Sarah Vanagt |
photography: | Artur Castro Freire |
editing: | Effi Weiss |
sound: | Nina De Vroome |
other films in the section

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...When You Look Away
Phie Ambo
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section: A Testimony on Knowledge
Czech Premiere

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The Truth about Killer Robots
Maxim Pozdorovkin
United States / 2018 / 82 min.
section: A Testimony on Knowledge
East European Premiere

Samuel L. Jackson narrates this audiovisual presentation of a never-finished manuscript by the eminent American writer and activist James Baldwin. This stirring history of the struggle of African-Americans against white supremacy is presented from the perspective of disbelieving amazement that such a thing could have ever happened and is actually still ongoing.
I Am Not Your Negro
Raoul Peck
United States, France, Belgium / 2016 / 93 min.
section: A Testimony on Knowledge
Czech Premiere

The faster pace of life in modern society has among other things led to an increase in the prevalence of panic attacks and anxiety disorders. A composition of details torn from context, accompanied by commentary from victims of panic attacks demonstrates the various ways in which they are manifested and draws unsettling conclusions.
Panic Attack
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section: A Testimony on Knowledge
European Premiere

A mixture of documentary and live action film, The Bit Player is a multilayered portrait of Claude Shannon, the man who invented the word “bit” to describe a unit of information and whose scientific work laid the foundations for IT and artificial intelligence. Through interviews with members of the scientific community, archival footage, and reenactments, the film presents the life and professional story of this forgotten genius who, in addition to his groundbreaking discoveries, also produced numerous strange and useless inventions and enjoyed juggling and cheating at games of chance. The film shows Shannon’s theories and technical ideas using animations easily understood by everyone.
"Claude Shannon should be a model for everyone in any creative field. He never lost his child-like curiosity. Sometimes it revolutionized the world; sometimes it made a flaming trumpet." M. Levinson
The Bit Player
Mark Levinson
United States / 2019 / 90 min.
section: A Testimony on Knowledge
Central European Premiere

Today, thousands of children are born thanks to the involvement of third parties in laboratories. This documentary analysis tracks the motivation of clients who use reproduction clinics, the ambitions of doctors, and the unsaturated market for assisted conception methods. One question remains hanging over the open topics: Where does the reproductive freedom of an individual end?
Making Babies
Barbara Burger
Switzerland / 2017 / 82 min.
section: A Testimony on Knowledge
World Premiere

A fantastic epic. A nationalist construct. Ideal for taking a selfie. A bunch of paint on a canvas that belongs on the junk heap. Anachronism. A transcendental experience. Working with the playfulness of the cinematic medium, the filmmaker takes us on a tour of the serious world of art, and gives voice to a theorist, an art restorer, a philosopher and a Japanese fan of Mucha.
Slav Epic Complex
Jan Strejcovský
Czech Republic / 2017 / 55 min.
section: A Testimony on Knowledge
World Premiere

Alain Badiou, born in 1937 in Morocco, demonstrated his exceptional skills in many fields of science, but became famous as a philosopher. The directorial duo the Kaylan brothers made their first feature film about Badiou, in which the philosopher himself talks about his work and personal life and presents his thoughts.
Badiou
Rohan Kalyan, Gorav Kalyan
United States, France / 2018 / 81 min.
section: A Testimony on Knowledge
World Premiere

An essay study on the possibilities of combining sports and film. Using traditional French film theory and philosophy, the director analyzes the sports performances of American tennis legend John McEnroe captured on 16mm film. The film offers a contemplation on the relationship between duration (durée), the passage of time, and motion.
In the Realm of Perfection
Julien Faraut
France / 2018 / 95 min.
section: A Testimony on Knowledge
Czech Premiere

In fictional sequences inserted into this documentary about economic, social and political perspectives on possible upcoming developments, the filmmakers portray a utopian future as a foreign territory. Six public figures from various cultural and social circles reflect on the future as a matter of time, people and the world.
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section: A Testimony on Knowledge
World Premiere

Every day, Vandana Verma travels across the face of Mars, taking pictures of its surface – all the while never leaving a NASA laboratory in Pasadena, California, from where she controls the Curiosity rover. This engrossing essayistic documentary joins her and other experts in space research in meditating over images of a planet located tens of millions of kilometers from Earth. Mars thus becomes the ideal place for studying our paradoxical relationship to photographs and for contemplating whether images from space (or also from various places on our planet) present us with reality or whether they actually create an alternate reality that we should approach far more cautiously.
“Martian imagery reveal as much about our relationship to images as they tell us about Mars itself. This film aims to make the spectral quality of. an image materialize in front of us.” M. Långström
The Other Side of Mars
Minna Långström
Finland / 2019 / 55 min.
section: A Testimony on Knowledge
Central European Premiere

Camorra is an Italian criminal organization operating in Naples and all throughout Campania. Its rapid expansion from initial smuggling to powerful organized crime mobs that trade drugs, weapons, and people has also influenced how the entire city and region evolved. The film edit uses contemporary film footage, news television reports, police photographs and newspaper headlines to depict the lives of the people there, the practices of criminal mob bosses and the overall atmosphere of the city. In this way, it delivers an exceptional comprehensive film report on one of the most powerful mafia organizations.
“Camorra is set in a specific historical moment, late 60s – early 90s, to convey not only emotions and information in a non-didactic manner, but to use the past as a mirror of the present as well.” F. Patierno
Camorra
Francesco Patierno
Italy / 2018 / 70 min.
section: A Testimony on Knowledge
Czech Premiere