Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz

The amnion – the fetal membrane protecting the embryo – becomes a metaphor in the film for an intimate space where pain can be shared and a path to healing sought. This sensitive portrait of three women whose lives have been marked by sudden separation is carried from the outset by a meditative soundtrack that shapes an environment in which personal experience becomes expressible. Ritual gestures – traditional costumes, cooking together, hugging – create a protective shell that allows pain not only to be expressed and shared, but also transformed.“True healing simply means opening yourself up to the truth of your life.” — from the film’s accompanying material

The voice-over of this intimate, visually delicate video confession describes physically experienced bouts of anxiety, panic, and radical loss of self-confidence that bring the author to the very edge of existence. It is precisely this place, where everything loses its meaning and urgency, that allows her not only to let go and fall, but also to grab and hold on again.“Hanging in There is an intimate account of the inner struggle between the pressure to be strong, to have everything under control, and the need to allow oneself to feel and fail. Sometimes, the greatest strength comes precisely at the moment when we allow ourselves to give up.” — from the film’s accompanying material

A collage of excerpts from Czechoslovak television educational programmes from the 1970s and 1980s devoted to the artificial termination of pregnancy is accompanied by an urgent voice-over reflecting on what really shapes the history of abortion: is it the idea of self- ownership and freedom, the development of medical technologies, state reproductive policy, or market logic? The film paints a complex picture of the reproductive history of socialist Czechoslovakia, in which media representations of abortion—so different from the rhetoric surrounding the feminist pro-choice movement in the US—are transcribed into intimate bodily experience. “We control our bodies. We control bodies. What is ‘we’ when we say ‘ours’? Touch the skin. On my own skin, I discover that I am thousands of others, not my own skin.”

Mājā – a Sanskrit term denoting a veil, illusion, or deceptive reflection that conceals the true nature of reality while simultaneously creating it. The film translates this ancient metaphor into slowly flowing black-and-white images: mesmerizing details, alternating light and shadow, flowing water that melts on the girl's face like a translucent veil. The central symbol of the film is a mirror cube – both a deception and a gateway, in which reality shatters into a dimension of reflections and opens up a space for quiet contemplation. “Through this visual meditation, I am searching for a way to come to terms with the impermanence of the world and find harmony in it—not as an escape, but as a deeper acceptance.” — from the film’s accompanying material

A four-minute stop-motion animation composed of photographs, watercolors, and fungal pigments brings to life the imagery of mushrooms in an endless array of shapes and forms. With exaggeration and humor, it allows a fascinating mycological universe to grow, evoking the infinitely ramified, mysterious world of mycelium and its hidden communication. “What do you do when your world starts to fall apart? I go for a walk, and if I’m really lucky, I find mushrooms. Mushrooms pull me back to my senses, not just – like flowers – through their riotous colors and smells but because they pop up unexpectedly, reminding me of the good fortune of just happening to be there.” — Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushrooms at the End of the World (Princeton University Press, 2015), p. 1.

Two narrative and aesthetic levels—a stylized studio room with a horror vibe that the fictional Nora can't leave, and a voyeuristic handheld camera recording a nervous girl in a real setting—connect the main character's body and experience with sexualized violence. A variation on Ibsen's woman, whose story is taken over and rewritten by a man, creates a counterpoint to the image of the contemporary heroine, who speaks for herself falteringly and painfully and refuses to be silenced.“We will never see all the fragments, nor will the story affect us in the same way as in big movies; we may be a little confused. Nora will not become our perfect, strong heroine, yet she invites us to share with her a sad walk through the city and a glimpse of that strange room.” — from the film’s accompanying material

This adaptation of the storyboard L’amore è un lepidottero (1941) by Italian artist and experimental filmmaker Bruno Munari contrasts dreamy melodrama set against the backdrop of war with the giallo aesthetics of Italian slasher films. The result is a rapid collage that combines computer animation, improvised shots, archival material, and images generated by artificial intelligence. Each element speaks a different visual language, but together they create a paradoxical “handmade” aesthetic in which technology clashes with nostalgia.“The film's process mirrors reports of Silicon Valley giants pirating terabytes of historical resources and destroying millions of physical books to feed their machines. While their AI garbage pollutes our environment, Replica deliberately processes problematic historical material and purifies it using contemporary tools.” — author's explanation

The film is based on video diary entries that the authors shared on their journey from Brazil/Peru to Florida. The juxtaposition of images of everyday life on both sides of America, connected by a single sea, is accompanied by text fragments in Czech and Spanish. These refer to Operation Condor, during which the US supported dictatorships in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as to the vision of “colored parachutes” by Brazilian thinker and activist Ailton Krenak, who calls on us to use our creativity at the end of the world to make parachutes with which to delay the fall.“So maybe we need to invent the parachute. Not to eliminate the fall, but to invent and manufacture millions of colorful, playful, and even pleasant parachutes.” Source: Krenak, Ailton. Ideias para adiar o fim do mundo / Ideas to Postpone the End of the World. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2019.

A dark fantasy inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, interwoven with Lovecraftian allusions, follows a lonely traveler who enters a forgotten realm where reality shatters. Visions of high mountain cliffs, glaciers, and monsters, created in collaboration with artificial intelligence, are accompanied by a voice-over narrating the events in an incomprehensible language. The black-and-white, high-contrast imagery builds an atmosphere of inexplicable horror that accompanies, in Lovecraft's words, “the defeat of those fixed laws of nature which are our only protection against the assaults of chaos and the demons of the unexplored universe.” “There is knowledge that defies words. And a tongue best left uncomprehended.”

Minimalist musical accompaniment, together with sound design replicas and emotionally charged screams from a crime drama revolving around the character of a deranged criminal, unify the vertical montage of found 16mm film strips from home archives. The result is a slightly paranoid and self-ironic mélange, which is shaped as a structural film. “This naive 16mm film was created through collective collaboration as part of a 16mm workshop at the Czech Visions 2025 festival. […] The assignment was: create a structural film experiment together. When asked what that was, I replied that it wasn't important, that they should just imagine it or ask AI. I don't know if they did that or what they imagined, but even though the result is a form composed solely of mistakes and errors, it has (at least for me) the unique charm of the unintended.” — Martin Ježek

The third part of the trilogy on representation, art, and politics is a collage of images and quotations with a congenial sound design by Ian Mikyska. While The Signature of Certain Things (2022) explored the role of artworks and institutions in society and The Commodity Catalogue (2023) focused on the commodity nature of artistic creation, the final part offers subversion rather than synthesis: it reveals the contradictions of artistic analysis, which do not lead to a clear political position but instead undermine themselves.“The silent imperative of accumulation now reigns supreme and absorbs everything, including hope. It is a new type of religiosity that interprets the world, permeates everything, and is capable of justifying anything. Even this modest dissenting film, seeking through its pre- declared resignation the possibility of expression, moves nothing, illuminates nothing. It too will be absorbed.”

A composition of collages from magazines, diary sketches, and skin prints, accompanied by a girl's confession in voice-over, tells the story of how the female body is transformed into an object—a mere vessel of male desire—in a whole range of forms of sexual violence: from subtle street harassment to rape. Imaginative stop-motion animation combines drawing, photography, and real objects. “Where does innocence end, and where do remarks begin that can lead to sexual violence? How does this shape her self-perception?” — from the film’s accompanying material

The seemingly purely observational fascination with insect bodies is disrupted by a diegetic soundtrack composed of distinctive frequencies to which the observed creatures are exposed. This scientific film experiment, which results in a visual transcription of their auditory responses into colored marks on a speaker, concludes with a tragic punchline.“The film captures how certain insects react to sound frequencies that are also used, for example, in military applications.” — from the film’s accompanying material