28th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival

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Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz

Exprmntl.cz is a competition section representing the latest Czech experimental films that search for new ways of expressing reality using both classical and digital film formats.

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Beyond Anachronism: Eons of the Binary (Film)
The eternal question of the digital age: how to rid analogue film of the traces of nostalgia? The answer here is a fast-paced stream of sharp photographs and blurred or disturbed shots of Prague's transport vehicles, anchored in the present by passengers holding mobile phones. The music for the film was created by Bratislava-based producer Sofia Nøt, and the film's co-writers include the generative realistic image creation system DALL-E 2.“What happens when the technology of the past meets the present? Can it create some new level of meaning? The analogue camera [in the film] explores and attempts to transcend the boundaries between the analogue and digital; human and artificial; reality and imagination; genuine and fake.”

Beyond Anachronism: Eons of the Binary (Film)

Claude Johann Čierny
Slovakia, Czech Republic / 2023 / 3 min.
section: Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz
World Premiere
But Not for Ever
The combination of archival footage from the African island of São Tomé, a former Portuguese colony with a slave system, and contemporary shots of Lisbon's decaying greenhouses, among which busts by Manuel de Oliveira hide in the lush vegetation, is complemented by urgent, poignant verses by São Tomé’s poets Alda Espírito Santo and Conceição Lima, recited by musician Gerson Marta. The images are linked by the image of the cocoa bean, a symbol of oppression – but not forever.“…each coffee bush now exhales a dead slave…”

But Not for Ever

Anežka Horová, Klára Trsková
São Tomé and Príncipe, Portugal, Czech Republic / 2023 / 4 min.
section: Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz
World Premiere
Carrot
The carrot rhyme that is the focus of the video belongs to the genre of đồng dao, traditional Vietnamese oral folk poetry for children. The preservation of rhyme and rhythm is more important to her than semantic continuity and comprehensibility. The author underlines the leaps and detours in content using animated collages, which she created using photos from the family archive, in which Czech and Vietnamese realities connect with a similar ease. “The saying about the carrot is very close to me because it reminds me of my childhood and my mother when she was teaching me to speak. I don't remember exactly when I learned the rhyme, but I still remember it, even if I don't remember all of it. In the same way, my mother, who once taught me the nursery rhyme herself, only remembers the first four sentences. The voice in the recording belongs to my two-year-old nephew.” – Lenka Tam Nguyen

Carrot

Lenka Tam Nguyen
Vietnam, Czech Republic / 2023 / 2 min.
section: Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz
World Premiere
Electricity
To the sound of the ripples of electric current, the pitch-black darkness of the forest is penetrated by fickle paths of light that seem to emanate from mushrooms, tree fungus and branches.

Electricity

Darja Parsi, Iryna Tsaryk, Viktoria Tomadze
Czech Republic / 2023 / 55 sec.
section: Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz
World Premiere
FORGIVE ME
The soundtrack of an intimate monologue of a fluctuating mind gathering the courage to ask for forgiveness mixes the gentle tone of the “inner” voice with the layering sounds of the natural and industrial environment, from which we see only brief monochromatic details perceived by those whose eyes are turned inwards.

FORGIVE ME

Tereza Chovancová
Czech Republic / 2023 / 2 min.
section: Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz
World Premiere
One Sol in the Life of Curiosity
Space agencies plan the schedule of activity on Mars in the cycle of sols – Martian days lasting 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds. In an experimental sci-fi, the aging rover Curiosity sets out on its routine mission. Tremors of curiosity and the desire for knowledge mix in a written monologue with doubts about its own abilities and the meaning of its actions, which it addresses to the silent planet. “A series of individual submitted photos is animated with the help of generative neural networks into a full-fledged story. The selection of scenes and the editing took place using my own written program for interacting with the neural network that was used. Indeed, a similar technology could theoretically be used to control the rover to search for anomalies in the 'seen' image.” – Vít Růžička

One Sol in the Life of Curiosity

Vít Růžička
Czech Republic / 2023 / 5 min.
section: Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz
World Premiere
Pelvic Chain
A dream of the anarchy of nerves, muscles and tissues, gripped by the shell of institutions and prejudices, but also by the remedies used by contemporary medicine, materializes in a demonstration of the possibilities of controlling the robust machine of a motorcycle. The diary account of the vicissitudes of recovery and the struggle to reconnect with one's own body is also a reflection on the ability to accept and share pain.“The homophobic shit of one of the paramedics is echoing throughout the ICU…”

Pelvic Chain

Marie-Anna Šulc
Czech Republic / 2023 / 7 min.
section: Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz
World Premiere
Perplexity
We see the liminal spaces of abandoned offices and adjacent corridors through the eyes of the one who is at home in them – a robotic vacuum cleaner. Its wanderings, punctuated by close-ups of materials or digital surfaces, provide an opportunity for borderline empathy with something that, like us, is looking for a way out. Meanwhile, electronic music, permeated by the fragile vocals of Václav Peloušek, embraces the office furniture in an almost redemptive gesture.“Perplexity asks its viewers to seek solidarity with a non-human person. … Utilizing a distinctive blend of animation techniques in Unity3D, coupled with AI style transfer, Perplexity boasts a unique visual style to mirror its premise. The film is a journey that traverses the non-human condition, as seen from a non-human perspective.”

Perplexity

Franz Milec
Italy, Czech Republic / 2023 / 4 min.
section: Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz
World Premiere
PLASMA
Vast and inaccessible, barren landscapes hide industrial structures and unknown technology. The stream of panoramic shots and visual explorations of the discharges and movements of the majestic machines is accompanied by the enchanting sound design of Tomáš Jiřička and framed by an interview with a scientist from the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.“I’m not too keen on watching science fiction, because I work in this field.” — Matěj PeterkaSource of the quote PLASMA.

PLASMA

Aleš Zůbek
Czech Republic / 2023 / 19 min.
section: Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz
World Premiere
Pray if You Want the Earth to Come Closer and the Sky to Speak to You
The black-and-white video prayer stages a small miracle in the form of a minimalist one-shot study of a glass vase, water surface and light. It’s as if the hands, which regularly stir up the still life, are asking for more than the elements and the utilized technique can give.The name of the film is a quote from the book Les Grands Initiés from Édouard Schuré.

Pray if You Want the Earth to Come Closer and the Sky to Speak to You

Liubov Maltseva
Czech Republic / 2023 / 4 min.
section: Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz
World Premiere
Pressing Thought
The fragile visualization of the feeling of the persistence of inner movements, albeit through small or even imperceptible reminders, prevents fleetingness through the subtle movements of an enigmatic object on a white background, where it almost loses its third dimension. In certain places, the dimensions of the central egg-shaped cocoon, in which something is hatching, is made similarly ambivalent by the lighting design.

Pressing Thought

Anna Hušková
Czech Republic / 2023 / 3 min.
section: Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz
World Premiere
Quarry
Anežka lives surrounded by cracks left by the (in)presence of her foster son and begs God for him to turn to faith. Fragments of echoes from his prison cell alternate with the daily routines that fill the stretching time. Meanwhile, the storm outside the windows covers the rough Beskydy landscape. The documentary film poem reveals a complex relationship of unconditional love that brings both hope and suffering.

Quarry

Josef Švejda
Czech Republic / 2023 / 7 min.
section: Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz
World Premiere
REPEAT
In a suggestive miniature, the artist creates impulses for the physical experience of the film: The needle, which consistently penetrates the palm of the hand in a close-up that repeats nine times on the screen, sews the audience to the screen, only to release them, unharmed, with a single jerk.

REPEAT

Zuzana Březinová
Czech Republic / 2023 / 1 min.
section: Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz
World Premiere
Sleep Paralysis
A man, whose mutated, darkly vibrating voice guides us through a space of disintegrating, divided or merging visual fragments, describes his own experience of compulsively waking up and falling asleep again, and of dreams diving into one another. In the abysmal depths of repeated dreams of being awake, he does not leave the space of his bed; reality, however, weighs down on him more and more heavily.

Sleep Paralysis

Vojtěch Starý
Czech Republic / 2023 / 4 min.
section: Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz
World Premiere
Tension
A rigid record of a performative action in which the artist exposes herself to patient physical acts. The motionless camera observes a chair in a clean, neutral space, a glass of water and crumpled tape that slowly disappears in the mouth of the protagonist. The performance is anchored in the real world by unfiltered ambient noise.

Tension

Adéla Mitová
Czech Republic / 2023 / 5 min.
section: Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz
World Premiere
The Commodity Catalogue
The film is the second part of a trilogy about representation, art and politics. In the previous film, The Signature of Certain Things (2022), the author dealt with the social role of art. In this essay, he encourages us to view images as commodities. But is it even possible to exclude art from this point of view? The very form of the film, which slyly follows the logic of commodified and multiplying images, becomes a hint to the answer.“Low resolution, distorted colours, an obsolete frame rate, errors and interferences. All of these are signs of VHS analogue video, which this film, of course, is not. It is merely a manifestation of consumerist aesthetics. Old images pretend to be new. New images pretend to be old. The form of art follows the logic of products and uses it to critique itself, but that’s about everything that’s happened so far.”

The Commodity Catalogue

Zbyněk Baladrán
Czech Republic / 2023 / 14 min.
section: Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz
World Premiere
the crow and the egg
This short experimental fable, filmed during a school plein-air session at the Wallenstein Loggia, uses stop motion animation and black and white images shot digitally while utilizing the camera obscura technique. In the surrounding woods, reflections on water and pebbles by the roadside, the work finds a materialisation of the fragility, envy and anger that make up the fable.

the crow and the egg

Nela Kollertová, Roberta Fehérová
Czech Republic / 2023 / 2 min.
section: Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz
World Premiere
The Law of Time

The Law of Time

Adéla Babanová
Czech Republic / 2023 / 30 min.
section: Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz
World Premiere
Was ist Kunst?
September 2023 marked the end of the exhibition Was ist Kunst? dedicated to the Serbian artist Dragoljub Raša Todosijević, an important representative of Eastern European conceptualism. The title of the exhibition and film was taken from one of his performances. In a video filmed for the Prague City Gallery, Turner revels in Todosijević's work with symbols such as the swastika and the orange, followed by his playfulness, dexterity and multimedia exuberance.“The Edinburgh Manifesto: who benefits from art? … the national saviours of art, a proofreader, a columnist who has nothing to do with art but writes about artists, their works and the issues of the art world…”

Was ist Kunst?

Vladimír Turner
Czech Republic / 2023 / 14 min.
section: Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz
World Premiere
Wombs & Brains (Hm..fantasy)
What constitutes body memory? How do we perceive its boundaries? How does the body deal with its image? The author finds answers in the experiences of meeting her own physicality in the gynaecologist’s office. Footage from the waiting room, the sounds of examinations and the view from the gynaecological chair create a suggestive ground for reflection on the hidden histories of the medical knowledge of physicality.“We are images created by blind bats. Economically minded creatures. Descendants of failed 4D ultrasounds.”

Wombs & Brains (Hm..fantasy)

Lucie Rosenfeldová
Czech Republic / 2022 / 9 min.
section: Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz
World Premiere
Ministerstvo kultury
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GEMO
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Respekt
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