Ji.hlava Online

The documentary’s brief synopsis sounds like an unconventional fairy tale – an old hermit and a young girl who can communicate with birds hear the singing of an unknown bird one day and set off into the forest and an abandoned mine to find it. Although the story involves modern recording equipment and microphones, this doesn’t detract from its fairy-tale poeticism. With birdsong at its centre, the film encourages concentrated listening, while at the same time leading us to reflect on the fact that even a sound as ordinary as birdsong has something mysterious about it. “Deep in the forests, the natural world offer itself up in equal proportions to the curiosity of scientists and the passions of poets.” ---Source: https://www.cinemadureel.org/en/films/7h15-merle-noir-2/    

An original video diary documenting the director's efforts to have artificial insemination. Cuthand describes his desire to have children of his own and the difficult journey he must take to have them, a journey that is also closely tied to his membership in Canada's First Nations and thus to the question of preserving his indigenous culture.“Grieving people who never were is harder than it seems.” (TJ Cuthand)---Source: https://asinabkafestival.org/portraits-short-docs

Marina is 26 years old and works as a prostitute to pay for her college education. She came to this work by accident and in the best possible way – in a feminist, safe environment and surrounded by people who care about her well-being. Together they face situations accompanied by exaggerated demands and prejudices.“Together they face the construction of a contemporary society full of demands and judgements against the slightest inconsistency.”---Source: https://archivodelcortometraje.es/en/cortometraje/30-70-60-120/

The film takes place on the eighth day of Russia's war campaign in Ukraine. Eight Ukrainians residing in the Czech Republic – a businesswoman, cleaning ladies, construction workers, and bus drivers – make their own diary-like observations of the events in their homeland. They continue to bury themselves in their work, unable to afford to withdraw themselves from their current lives. In their minds, however, they've transported themselves hundreds of kilometers away, helping their fellow countrymen and women by any means necessary. They provide accommodation for refugees, scout for bulletproof vests, and call their loved ones who’ve taken shelter from falling bombs. They have a hectic and emotionally overwhelming 24 hours ahead of them. But it’s not the first 24 hours and it won’t be the last.“Through the personal stories of real Ukrainian people, the film brings intimate insight into the many facets of war.” — Oksana Moiseniuk---Source: https://www.dokrevue.cz/clanky/osmy-den-valky

This short vertical video presents the library of the Broumov monastery, combining documentary elements with 3D animation and synthetic commentary with a tinge of music. The internal directorial dialogue reflects Kohout’s own works of art exhibited as part of the Ora et lege project, which related contemporary art to the culture and teachings of the Benedictines.“One of the thematic areas of Ora et lege is a secular or rather an ambiguous relationship to the Church (Ed Atkins, Martin Kohout), which on the one hand honors its tradition and history, but on the other hand prefers or professes secular humanist ideals.”---Source: Exhibiton Review Ora et Lege https://kubaparis.com/archive/ora-et-lege

Picture a Polish village in the middle of nowhere. In it, there are groups of peculiar, old, bearded men who spare no judgment on the world and themselves. While the coronavirus pandemic rages on in the outside world, life on the periphery moves as slowly as ever. The only difference now is that a new topic has been added into the mix of their existential debates.“And people will drop like flies.”

Tainan County is located on the southwest coast of Taiwan. The locals have a modest lifestyle and make their living by rice farming and fishing. The filmmaker lived there for twelve years, capturing the beautiful coastal landscape and the lives of its inhabitants. This time-lapse documentary shows the transformation of nature and urban settlement by human activity as the permanence of tradition and human belonging. Static shots of sea waves and vast rice field give the impression of photographs come to life, creating a contemplative documentary film about the sense of timelessness in a Southeast Asian rural community.“In 2021, while I was busy with the final stage of the post-production, my father suddenly passed away. I thought the best gift I could give him is this work full of sea salt and heavy wind, which very much resembled our lives and destiny.”---Source: Director Statement, Taiwan Docs. https://docs.tfai.org.tw/en/film/6738

A young author sets off to Argentina to seek the lost fragments of her life story. Using the archival photographs and a personal narrative, this autobiographical reconstruction of a family history documents how world history shaped the outcome of one summer fling, the emergence of new families and their tragic separation.“Paris fills me with joy. But I leave for Buenos Aires anyway.”

Amazonia, 19th century. Alexandrina was a woman whose features and skin color made her an object of observation. An exhibit that a white colonizer could examine, evaluate, and own. But the legacy that Alexandrina and hundreds of others with similar fates left behind survives to this day. In their faces, rituals, jewellery, and symbols. “In this war, we all fight against the death of memory.”

In 1772, Englishwoman Mary Delany wrote to her niece: “I have found a new way of imitating flowers.” The imitation in question was the art form called decoupage, based on cut-outs and reshuffling of pictures. The charm and botanical precision of these works attracts attention of even today’s artists, among others by an anonymous programmer who is trying to invent a way of capturing the flowers’ vivacity in pictures. With this aim in mind, she has created an algorithm, which would combine science and beauty, similarly to Delaney’s efforts, whose illustrations it is meant to animate.“As a director, I take the opposite side of my training: I have no fascination for what is called a ‘beautiful image’. I explore the limits of the video signal, between overexposure and absolute black, to push the limits of digital pictures.” (Miléna Trivier)---Source: https://screen.brussels/fr/professional/milena-trivier

“Are you proud of yourself?” This was a question asked in 2020 by a father of one of female voluntary workers who had just come back from a rescue mission searching for drowning refugees in the Mediterranean Sea. Instead of a reply, an open letter came to life, followed by a film illustration of the feelings of ugliness and hopelessness, composed of sea waves mingling with various film footage.“In July 2020, a young volunteer returning on the humanitarian aid ship Sea Watch 3 writes to her father. The text of this letter is put into perspective through different registers of travel images (animation, Super 8, archives…).”---Source: https://www.shortfilmwire.com/en/film/200110598/En-col_re

A Palestinian poet, Rashed Hussein and an Israeli journalist, Amos Kenan met in the basement of Rogosin’s Bleecker Street Cinema – old friends and representatives of two nations that in the 1970s set off on a long journey to mutual understanding and co-habitation on a shared territory, a journey which remains unfinished even today. To recall their remote homeland, inaccessible to Hussein, who emigrated, Rogosin edits in the iconic scenes of the discussed locations and people. Similarly riven is the dialogue between the two intellectuals who fundamentally refuse the role of each other’s enemy that is forced on them.“It was a very simple film, very crude, but very honest and very different from what was being made at the time. It was criticized by extremists on both sides, yet many people liked it because it was different.” (Lionel Rogosin)---Source: https://festival.ilcinemaritrovato.it/film/arab-israeli-dialogue/

The Sidi Bouzid beach near the Moroccan port city of El Jadida is famed for its crystal-clear sear and extraordinary biodiversity. There are dozens of species of algae. However, some of them are used by pharmaceutic and food companies to produce agar powder. The nearby factories producing canned fish and phosphate fertilizer pollute water and air. This documentary uses performative interventions which erase the distinction between the human and the natural to explore the multilayered relationship of the locals to the ecosystem which is a source of both awe and their livelihood. “He is the one who subjected the sea for you to eat tender flesh from it and to extract from it ornaments which you wear.” ---Source: An inscription on a Shafei emblem quoted in the film

In the 1980s, dozens of Namibian children were brought up in socialist Czechoslovakia. The aim of this special education program was to raise a new generation of children as a politically conscious elite. But the experiment ended in the early 1990s following fundamental political changes in both countries. The children were forcibly repatriated back to Namibia where they were unable to adapt culturally due to never having completed their elementary education nor receiving any formal language and psychological training. Documentary filmmakers tracked down the now-adult Namibian children and followed their fates both in Namibia and in the Czech Republic over the course of three years.“No one has the right to take away their childhood and crush their dreams. No matter the time period, country, culture, or ideology in which it happens – it's just plain criminal.”

At the turn of the 1970s, racial segregation in the United States was still fresh in many people's heads. At that time, African-American pop musicians were among the strongest voices on racial discrimination and social violence and would speak out to the public. This intimate and impressionable documentary, which links the personal accounts of musicians and their music with footage from African-American communities, takes us behind the scenes of popular country and blues production. The title Black Roots not only refers to the skin color of the African-American community but also metaphorically expresses the nature of the experience from which the life of the minority grows.“Black Roots gets a group of five African Americans talking around a café table: among family memories, observations about the present, and the desire to reverse injustices emerges a powerful picture of black pride, anger, discouragement, mirth, combativeness, and beauty.”---Source: https://festival.ilcinemaritrovato.it/en/film/black-roots/

Three groups of adolescent girl friends from Quebec are going through tough changes. The process of inventing their own bodies and identity are being recorded on the move by their smartphones and shared with their peers from other parts of the networked world. Due to their strong need of external confirmation, they alter their lives into a series of retouched pictures and videos. The film camera, however, captures their feelings of void, loneliness and deep inner insecurities that are not so attractive for Periscope, TikTok or Instagram. An intimate portrait of adolescence is made with full comprehension of experiencing and self-presentation in a generation growing up on the brink of the real and virtual worlds.“It's easier to talk to your phone than it is to talk to people.”

Beneath the sheets where a young couple lies from morning to evening, there were long swelling problems. Sometimes love itself is too little, even when one’s bedroom eyes say otherwise. An intimate film devoid of tabloid clichés that examines the bed of two lovers who can no longer run away from the inevitable truth.“We don't know if our love outweighs the negativity of our dynamics.”

Two prisons in the American Northwest conduct a mental health experiment. Prisoners are shown videos of nature, something many of them haven’t experienced in decades. The film is a meditation on isolation, humankind's relationship with nature, and the fact that songbirds singing and strolls in the forest aren't to be taken for granted.“Equal parts meditation and provocation, Blue Room identifies the damage done by withholding access to the outdoors and how we are all prisoners when the essential human need for communion with nature is denied.” (Angie Driscoll)---Source: https://hotdocs.ca/whats-on/hot-docs-festival/films/2022/blue-room

A filmmaker and a young, left-wing activist named Pierre meet outside amidst the pandemonium of civil unrest. Every Saturday, they take to the streets of Paris in support of the yellow vests movement. Originally, when the yellow vest protests started in November 2018, it was about calling for affordable housing and cheaper fuel prices. Later the protests expanded to include demands for economic justice and the French president's resignation. The film consists of footage shot from the heart of the crowd and authentic interviews with opponents and supporters of the movement. The author's introspective voiceover thematizes the passion and romantic feelings brewing inside her despite the brutality and urgency of the demonstrations.“It’s the thread of loving passion and unreasonable bewitchment that the filmmaker has chosen to pull upon, as a mirror to the fiery, revolutionary hopes of a social movement gathering together individuals from very different horizons every week on the streets of Paris.” (Fabien Lemerciera)---Source: https://cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/423280/

In the winter of 2021/2022, a crisis broke at the Polish-Belarussian border, with Syrian migrants trying to cross the frontier. In the no-man’s land in between the two countries, they were suffering from hunger and diseases. A group of Polish female volunteer workers were making all possible efforts to bring humanitarian relief to them, but often with no avail. This led to frustration, anxiety and fatigue, all captured in this film observing the work of volunteers on the spot.“The migration crisis won’t disappear in Poland, but when you think about the scale about the whole world? Maybe sometimes you think you’re useless, you can help just few people among all.” (a female volunteer worker)

A collection of silent shorts was designated for the US pavilion at the 1958 Brussels Worldʼs Fair. The film sequences were screened in the pavilion in a neverending loop. The story and characters were not important, what was of significance was showing moments from the everyday life of Americans. The film programme was to showcase the best of the US: modern metropolises, happy nuclear families, miracles of technology, full shelves in supermarkets. With a dynamic montage and distinct aesthetics the director managed to create a film collage that is reminiscent of the avant-garde experiments.“They were to be little bits of Americana. While I did the filming in and around NewYork City and the editing, Donn Pennebaker traveled around the United States collecting images that he sent back to me. We made about 30 loops. Penny made some, I made some, and Ricky Leacock and Wheaton Galentine each made one. I came up with a lot of rhythmic editing in order to get these three minute loops to work. I had to get a lot of information into 100 feet of film. Those loops were a big hit at the fair.” — Shirley Clarke

As part of a series mapping the industrial buildings that shaped the history of Slovakia, a half-live action, half-mythical portrait of people who dedicated their lives to Okras in Čadca, Slovakia was created. The cooperative enterprise was one of the few to survive the regime change and the post-Soviet rise of competition and still supplies Christmas decorations to Slovak and foreign shops.“Mapping industrial heritage is an important part of our cultural memory. We owe a debt to her. While industrial architecture abroad is the subject of research centres, and abandoned water reservoirs, breweries, and glassworks are transformed into lively cultural centres or original residential housing after conversion, in Slovakia there is no systematic inventory of industrial buildings.“ — Peter Kerekes---Source: https://mojakultura.sk/dokumentarny-cyklus-budujeme-slovensko-sa-vracia-na-obrazovky-rtvs/

A few years ago, Argentine novelist Félix Bruzzone bought a house near the sprawling Campo de Mayo military base near Buenos Aires. It was not a random choice: his mother was kidnapped and held there during the military junta’s rule in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The aim of the writer’s self-therapeutic mission is also to uncover the other dark secrets of the location. The idyllic countryside provides a stark contrast to the atrocities committed by the Argentine government, as recounted by local witnesses. From their accounts, Bruzzone composes a picture of a place that contributed significantly to the disruption of his family and the nation.„The film is like a poem in the sense that it is not a movie that dwells on meticulous detail. It unfolds gradually, using symbolism to find ways, if one can, to overcome the grief. It is not direct like a history book.“ — Jonathan Perel---Source: https://www.latinolife.co.uk/articles/camuflaje-camouflage-2022-jonathan-perel

In the midst of a vast desert in the American West lie the abandoned ruins of a ghost town. A young person, Eileen, decided to leave the hectic hustle and bustle of modern life to live there and dedicate their life to hard work. During the day, they repair the crumbling houses in the town, at night they sleep in their trailer. They meet many locals and travelers with whom they share both their joys and doubts. The longitudinal documentary works as a double portrait: a portrait of a person defying society’s ideas and a portrait of a place living in the past, full of idiosyncratic figures and fascinating life stories.

Miko is a truck driver, his father is Romani, and above all he is a man who wanted to help those in need. When the Czech government was looking for reasons not to take in a few dozen children from Greek refugee camps after the chemical attacks on Syrian civilians in 2018, Miko took justice into his own hands and, together with the Czechs Helping initiative, prepared facilities for child refugees. However, government officials gave priority to political interests. Will parliamentary elections and a change of ministries save the situation? An unflattering but accurately portrayal of the Czech Republic as a country that will only offer a helping hand when it is worthwhile. “The country today doesn’t actually allow you to act according to your conscience.”

The musical compilation of five performers is complemented by haptic images of sculptural objects, where the author emphasizes the materiality of the fabric. In the wake of the current ecological crisis, the film outlines a surreal world in which the imaginations of new organisms materialize.“Michaela Rožnovská sculptural objects, in collaboration with Martin Dominik Kratochvíl, make imaginations of new animals on earth visible, based on abstracted shapes of plants or the simplest organisms living on this planet. They present themselves as heirs of our culture, mythology and religion.”---Source: https://invenio.nusl.cz/record/501818?ln=cs

The film is a portrait of cinematographer Tomáš Šťastný, from whom the director inherited his name and profession. The director combines archival family materials and personal videos with a feature dramatization that is an intimate insight into his memories and an attempt to understand his father.“I’m not saying goodbye to you with this film because I know I’ll keep discovering you.” — Tomas Stastny Jr.

“I had many friends before the war; many of them are dead now”, one of the narrators comments, looking at a photo of her classmates. “We had a perfect life, but we were never satisfied,” she adds laconically. The secondary school in Mostar united them, the War of Independence divided them. This mosaic of memories of the early 1990s is composed of contemporary postcards and silent shots of places where wars were once fought. Their calmness today contrasts with the emotional excerpts from the letters of the Croatian students. They describe their flight across the border, their experiences in refugee camps, and their lingering hatred of the enemies who robbed them of their home and youth.“They took everything from me, everything I had. They drove me from my home, robbed me, imprisoned my father, destroyed my city and everything I loved about it.”  

A visual essay accompanied by ambient electronica presents a virtual environment that only seemingly resembles our everyday world. 3D digital objects composed of both technological and organic structures create a dystopic unfamiliar landscape from which all human traces have disappeared a long time ago. “The design process reflects my views on various topics, which are significant to me, at the moment of creation, and which I try to resolve within myself, subconsciously or perhaps subliminally.” ---Source: Interview: The virtual world of thoughts: Artist Kristýna Sidlárová presents her project Digital Climate. Novy Zine 1. https://novyzine.com/Digital-Climate

The legendary Chelsea Hotel in New York City finds itself at a critical moment in its existence. Eight years of reconstruction means hope for the owners that it will be reopened in its full glory and beauty. But for the more than 50 regular tenants, the already difficult living conditions in the middle of a construction site can result in an even more difficult existential situation. It is this unique turning point that is the subject of the documentary, which uses profiles of residents of different ages and interests to piece together a historical picture of the iconic building. A hotel that in the pop culture imagination – but apparently also in reality – has become more than just a mere place of habitation.“Our intention was to keep a distance from the mythology and deconstruct it. We wanted to welcome the audience through the backdoor of the Chelsea Hotel and to show something different from what people usually imagine.”---Source: https://www.cineuropa.org/en/interview/422124/

This short hybrid essay based on French philosopher Paul Virilio's theory of “dromology” follows a racecar driver named Irina, who enjoys life in the fast lane more than anything else, and a French expert who explains how speed and velocity have always been fundamental factors of political power. The result is a reflection on both the practical and ideological aspects of speed and how velocity relates to gravity, the human experience, presence, and power-driven practices.“It would be a mistake to forget that wealth is an aspect of speed. One usually assumes that power is linked to wealth. In my opinion, power is first linked to speed. Wealth only comes afterwards.”

Snow-capped mountain tops, picturesque villages, wholesome towns… this is the Austria we know from travel books and travelogues. And it’s the same Austria whose small-town morals have been taking a beating from the critical sting of writer and playwright Elfriede Jelinek since the 1960s. However, Müller's documentary-portrait doesn't rely solely on the tropes of a biopic about this (in)famous literary figure. Instead, the film searches for reasons why the author's assertion of past unfinished business enraged the people of Austria so much that they turned their backs on the provocative Nobel Prize winner. Personal confessions become political. A language experiment becomes a political tool. And history becomes a shadow that will forever hover over distraught Austrian citizens until they choose to confront it head-on. “I have the feeling that since my childhood I haven´t truly experienced anything anymore or anything that would somehow be of importance. I think that in general the artist tanks up so much frustration and pain in childhood that it´s enough for the rest of his life.”

How do locations of iconic scenes in Czechoslovak classic cinema look like today? This film makes use of soundtracks to transfer viewers into the classic works of cinema of the past millennium, while, by way of contrasting footage of today’s real look of the places, it builds a provocative bridge between the past decades and contemporary times. “We only serve tap water with coffee.” ---Source: Film Inheritence / in Empty Location / And what about you, Mireček? (7:36 - 7:39)

Inspired by a poem of the same name, written by Anatol Stern (1929), where the famished proletariat yells: “They stuck our throats with the food for soul!”, this experimental film is a homage to committed poetry. The film was thought to have been destroyed by the Nazis, but in 2019 it was discovered in the Bundesarchiv.

Eva Eisler is an important Czech designer and jewelry maker. The short film shows her creative process from ideation to the realization of her ideas and presents the basic building blocks of her work: purity, elegance, and minimalistic originality. All the while her metallic structures contrast with the dreamy, tender aesthetics of the film.“Both in life and in work – if we want to be honest – we should constantly be looking for the essence of things and ourselves.”---Source: Interview with Eva Eisler, Heroine, 15. 9. 2020. https://www.heroine.cz/kultura/3049-ceska-stopa-ve-svetovem-designu-sperky-evy-eisler-nosila-i-zaha-hadid

Norms and artificial constructs regarding the body image have a negative impact mostly on women. In this liberating gesture of a documentary essay we can see not only a rich tapestry of human physicality, but also differences in our individuality and self-awareness. We are different not only in our looks, but also in the way we see, perceive and experience ourselves.“A visual exploration of the female body and self-awareness, gently told by a variety of women using their own bodies as canvas.”---Source:https://cphdox.dk/film/red-lines-white-lines-fine-lines-eva-a-visual-essay-on-the-female-body-kiss-me-never-letters-from-st-petersburg-toxic-magnus/

The operation of the Turów brown coal mine and electric plant in the area around the Czech-Polish-German tripoint has been springing tensions in international relations. For the Polish, Turów is a means of livelihood, while local Czechs fear an eventual expansion of the plant would lead to drinking water deficiency and other ecological problems. This conflict, seen from a distance, is symbolized by the Czech-Polish contest for the best homemade potato salad, in which Teresa, whose family is employed at the plant, takes part.“You know, we are just ‘lowly humans’, we don’t decide anything. It would be very bad if we didn’t have water here, but we don’t understand these things, it’s a game amongst those at the top.” – Anonymous protagonist

A jumble of images of the seashore, grassy plains, and dense forests merges into one blurred image on the time-damaged film frame, creating an associative diary of impressions and memory fragments that pass through our minds as unpredictably as waves flowing into each other on the beach.“A short February sketch from the Baltic coast.”---Author of quote: Peter Podolský

Petr Michal‘s meditative documentary follows the current life of an esteemed Czech literary translator, Anna Karenina. The film largely treats the relationship with her late husband, poet Petr Kabeš, and the feeling of loneliness she has been facing since his death. It is definitely not a conventional documentary portrait, since the director does not ask questions, and instead lets Karenina voice out her thoughts and feelings, observing her with a casual camera during work or on her mountaineering trips. The film also serves as an implicit proof of love to analogue medium: not only the book, but analogue film as well, with its invisible, yet almost tangible features.“I know that loneliness is a sort of a task, it is here for me to do or finish what we once agreed to act upon with Petr, and, as a matter of fact, what I negotiated with fate.” — Anna Karenina

Even before the pandemic, there were almost 24,000 homeless people in the Czech Republic. In the following months, many more Czechs faced housing crisis due to the increase in the unemployment rate. Filip, a social work student from Prague experiences their reality first hand. The protagonist of a video journal was shooting in the streets of Ústí nad Labem. In the hot summer days, his existence shrank to finding a mere place to sleep and a meal to eat. Growing tiredness and apathy are temporarily brightened by joyful moments of human solidarity and warm meals. In such circumstances, things like that are not at all common; they represent a means of survival.“An autobiographical video journal of a social worker who decided to spend a week in the street of an unknown city. Is home a place inside or outside?”---Source: by author

Like at the New Year’s Eve, showers of colourful light cut through the darkness. While fireworks dissolve into nothing after a thunderous sound, shattered glass leaves material artifact. Sharp pieces then become a reminder of the real track that fireworks leave in the sky. “I have always been fascinated with fireworks. So I decided to portray its immitation.” ---Source: Z. Picpauer https://fud.ujep.cz/sites/digitalni-media/student/zdenek-picpauer/

The steel industry once put Luxembourg's economy on its feet. After the industry died out, what remained of it was deserted, colossal buildings and lives scarred by unsafe working conditions. However, for many, these hazardous jobs still represented a daily beacon of hope and financial security. This monumental film stands in the memory of the labor that went on behind four factory walls, documenting in “memento mori” fashion the vanishing world of industrial workers.“Forgotten spaces filled with memories from past lives: GLIMMER is a sound immerse journey through the once so flourishing steel industry in the heart of Europe. Told through a very personal lens, the film reminisces what the industry meant for humanity.”---Source: https://simonehart.com/discontinued

This multi-layered portrait of Jean-Luc Godard shows the world of one of the pioneers of the French New Wave as a laboratory of ideas. In the maze of his parallel lives, we meet him as a star who burst into the world of film, as a left-wing radical and advocate of Maoism, and as an experimenter with new technologies through which he reinvents the medium of film. Despite the hectic activity of the director, who made over 140 films, Godard’s portrait has a subtly nostalgic tone. Part of his world is solitude, which, according to documentary filmmaker Cyril Leuthy, is necessary to create a work of art. “In all my films, there is something about loneliness. It is something that interests me because perhaps I feel it too. Perhaps it is a good way to reach and touch the audience… to be an artist, you need loneliness.” ---Source: https://businessdoceurope.com/venice-ff-godard-seul-le-cinema-by-cyril-leuthy/ 

František Fajtl and Filip Jánský were among the few Czechoslovak airmen who actively fought on all major European battlefronts during World War II and lived to tell the tale. This unique documentary edit, which combines authentic eyewitness accounts of historic events with little-known archival footage, examines various fates and places as well as the journeys associated with them. The resulting amalgam of images, speeches, and music/sound files is far from your typical historical illustration. A suggestive portrayal of life under bleak conditions, far away from home and on the cusp of death, unfolds before our very eyes.“The moment I saw these two Czechoslovak airmen flash onscreen at the National Film Archive in a series of raw footage shot by director Jiří Weiss, I found that this wartime footage had an interesting way of tying in with the books written about both airmen.”---Source: https://protisedi.cz/trailer-good-old-czechs/

Josete Massa Residence in Madrid is the world’s first retirement home for senior LGTBIQ+ citizens. Javier Codesal filmed here between 2019 and 2020, while the building was undergoing renovations. He places the residents of the home among the rubble almost like living sculptures in a gallery. Their bodies, like their souls, defy heteronormative notions of beauty. They recite fragments of biblical texts and quote Pasolini and Jarman like modern-day apostles. The religious texts flowing from their lips are not so much about faith as they are about cultural tradition. They have laid the foundations for centuries of canonical narratives that reduce the representatives of sexual minorities to a set of stereotypes.“A woman being made from Adam´s rib attributes a mythical importance to trans people. This fable leads us to believe that the physical reality of trans expresses the original traits of our changeable corporeality.”

The Guadiana River, which forms the link between Portugal and Spain and serves as a powerful source of water supplying vital energy to the entire southeastern Iberian Peninsula, may soon dry up completely. Like many other rivers, its very existence has come under threat by climate change, which is also, in turn, leading to the demise of the rhythmic cadences that have resounded along this water flow for centuries.“We, human beings, are a plague. A plague that is overloading its own planet. And, what's worse, a plague that is aware of being so.”

My hair isn’t an invitation for conversation. My hair doesn’t want to be touched. My hair doesn’t ask for compliments. My hair just exists, and there’s nothing you can do about it. And you can’t do anything about me. A stylized and claustrophobic articulation of the boundaries of the body and personal space.“You have beatiful hair.”

A film portrait about a young plumber who defies the ideas of his whole family about his future. The skeleton of the story becomes an Excel spreadsheet full of mundane tasks, according to which Tomáš, after his burnout in his adult and working life, guides himself every day.    This film was made during the My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Zuza Piussi and Adam Oľha.

What if your girlfriend tells you she's having a baby with you? What if home birth seems more appealing to you than hospital birth? What if you live in a house with other roommates? Find out how a young couple dealt with these issues.   This film was made during the My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Tereza Reichová and Martin Dušek.

The primary motif of the documentary is the journey. A metaphorical journey, a spiritual journey, a tangible journey, a forest path, a road, a sidewalk, a drug trip, or a journey abroad. The director pastes together a collage of micro-stories of people and places that comment on the journey. Her documentary oscillates between playful absurdism, existentialism and existential questions, environmentalism, and social commentary. The dynamism and rhythm of the narrative are then determined by the jumps between different forms of video, such as analogue film, digital film, and mobile phone filming.“I think there's this idea of adventure, that you go somewhere straight, and you don’t know where you're going. It doesn’t matter where you go, as long as you get somewhere.” — Roman Prahl, art historian

A documentary essay raising the question what could be seen as pornography, in what ways a viewer should watch it and who is supposed to be its subject. Based on the ideas of theoreticians in porn studies, the film reveals some ideological and esthetic influences of this visual form, a representation of physical pleasure aiming to raise a similar kind of physical pleasure in its viewers.“A variety of hazy, lo-fi clips rub up against an isolated digerati immersed in temporary pornutopias. Why not name it a small collection, a modest archive of sexual imageries and pleasures?”---Source:https://mikehoolboom.com/?p=20435

On the one hand, the multi-layered film functions as an autobiographical portrait of a non-binary person, but at the same time it presents the wide range of difficulties and joys that trans and non-binary people in the Czech Republic go through. The personal is political in this film, which is why the kaleidoscope of situations includes intimate conversations with their mother over fried schnitzels, shots from Ride of the Kings, costumed festivities in the Slovácko region, talking about their coming out around the fire, and serious topics of discriminatory Czech legislation regarding trans people. The informal character of the film is enhanced by authentic interviews and handheld camera footage accompanying the lives of the protagonists.

At the end of the 1970s, the Taiwanese coastline was dotted by several futuristic, elliptical buildings that became known as “UFO Houses”. However, this beachfront resort, cheekily catering to the fantasy of American lifestyle, soon failed and the legacy of visionary real estate agents now stands as a ghost town. The author in his film essay ponders over capitalism, architecture and the meanings of utopia, combining digital and celluloid materials to build up audiovisual experience with a similar kind of energy to that of these “UFO Houses”. “After decades, real estate speculators and opportunists were long gone, what remains is the northeast monsoon wind howling across the semi-abandoned houses. After all, history is repeating itself, akin to annual crab migration.” (Chun-Tien Chen)---Source: https://filmfreeway.com/ChronicleofNowhere927

Go down the valley, into the dusty quarry where there is nothing near and far, just you and your mind straining to catch the slightest trembling. You can hear the crackling of fire in the distance. One must burn with full consciousness to become complete. A monochromatic deep dive into the blurred boundaries of consciousness and unconsciousness. “In the glimpses of the sunrays of the past I’m looking for myself – you today.”

This impressionistic urban symphony captures Manila as a place of fascinating contrasts. Poverty clashes with the construction boom, the lingering beggars with rushing cars and pedestrians. Counterpoints are both a meaning-making and stylistic element. One poetically mirrors the other.

This documentary film by Jennifer Baichwal tells the story behind the Johnson v. Monsanto Co. lawsuit filed by Dewayne “Lee” Johnson, who sued the agrochemical corporation Monsanto for exposing him to the Roundup herbicide product that gave him cancer. Johnson's case was the first of thousands of lawsuits filed against the company and its herbicide glyphosate, which at one point was among the best-selling herbicides in the world. The film not only covers Johnson's story, but also exposes the greed of a large corporation that puts profit over people's health and manipulates scientific studies to its advantage. The film also serves as an environmental and humanistic call to action and avoids focusing solely on one specific court case. “In telling Johnson’s story, Into the Weeds asks whether this kind of David versus Goliath fight can effect substantial and lasting change.”---Source: https://www.cbc.ca/passionateeye/episodes/into-the-weeds

This documentary film, which is based on the field-recording research method, gives space to the physical places where important energy, natural, and political processes take place. The director, musicians Václav Havelka and Pan Throrarensen, philosopher Lukáš Likavčan, and field-recordists Sara Pinheiro and Magnús Bergson all ask the question: “What are sounds that we don’t attach any importance to in our everyday lives trying to tell us and how can they predict the sequence of events that affects our lives?” Here, sound becomes a tool that can oftentimes capture geological time better than an image.“The aim of this Czech-Icelandic art project is to focus primarily on future critical infrastructure and breaking points through sound.” — Ivo Bystřičan---Source: https://www.ceska-krajina.cz/2869/zvuky-prirody-v-rezervaci-velkych-kopytniku-dnes-nahravali-umelci-v-ramci-mezinarodniho-projektu/  

This documentary film, which is based on the field-recording research method, gives space to the physical places where important energy, natural, and political processes take place. The director, musicians Václav Havelka and Pan Throrarensen, philosopher Lukáš Likavčan, and field-recordists Sara Pinheiro and Magnús Bergson all ask the question: “What are sounds that we don’t attach any importance to in our everyday lives trying to tell us and how can they predict the sequence of events that affects our lives?” Here, sound becomes a tool that can oftentimes capture geological time better than an image.   “The aim of this Czech-Icelandic art project is to focus primarily on future critical infrastructure and breaking points through sound.” — Ivo Bystřičan   --- Source: https://www.ceska-krajina.cz/2869/zvuky-prirody-v-rezervaci-velkych-kopytniku-dnes-nahravali-umelci-v-ramci-mezinarodniho-projektu/

Two apartments where he lives alone. A vacation he would like to die on. The astrological intervals he assigns to the planets when composing. Composer Jan Klusák has written music for the greatest films of the 1960s. But even in his nineties, he does not lose his unique sense of humor and insight.“When I was a child, decent people died at the age of 57, and that was it.” — Jan Klusák

Rapper Čavalenky tells the story of the oak forest. A story of trees whose roots date back to the time before the Anthropocene and whose wood helped humanity achieve the most fundamental historical breakthroughs. Trees, whose value we perceive only through its market potential because they're only worth something to us when they're cut down, chopped, and sold. “Trees are not silent. They're telling us what happened. Over the years, the memory of nature has become embedded in them.”

This operatic documentary takes on an unconventional approach as it covers the life story of Czechoslovak composer Jan Kapr (1914–1988). The once-celebrated composer who was favored by the communist regime was, nonetheless, eventually silenced and erased from history during the 1970s. The film makes use of Kapr's musical scores as well as amateur film shots and, with the help of a playful Dadaist libretto, reveals his life and work, set against the backdrop of historical change. The behind-the-scenes footage from a choir recording deconstructs the biographical genre and shows us how difficult it can be to interpret archival material, memories, and linear narratives.  

Over the last quarter century, Josef Koudelka, a prominent Czech photographer and member of the international agency Magnum Photos, has travelled many times in the footsteps of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus and visited more than two hundred Hellenistic and ancient Roman cities. And this became the subject of his last big project Ruins. Turkish documentary filmmaker Coskun Asar captures the artist's epic journey across the Mediterranean and the individual photographs taken along the way, portraying with respect and humility an artist who seeks the absolute in his life, work, and philosophy as such.“Everywhere you go, you are in a beautiful place. Contemporary people have built terrible things next to it, but to see it – quelle chance, quelle chance! I have to see all this beauty in the world.” (Josef Koudelka)

On the Greek island of Arki there are a thousand goats, but only thirty people. Among them is a single child, a boy named Kristos, who is just finishing his first year of primary school. In order to complete his primary education, he would have to go to another island to study, which his parents cannot afford. However, Kristos' teacher Maria is determined to do everything in her power. In this poetic observational documentary, a ten-year-old boy faces the dilemma of whether to stay on his native island and become a shepherd like his father and brothers, or venture into the unknown.“This film has its roots in my childhood. My father was a passionate sailor and every year we sailed around the Aegean Sea. Out of all the Dodecanese, Arki became the island dearest to my heart. When my father died, I felt I had to go back and I was sad to learn that there was only one child left on the island, the only student at its small elementary school. Soon I realized that Kristos was the same age I was when I landed on the island for the first time. What does it mean to be totally alone and to grow up without a friend? I felt the desire to make a documentary about how life turned out for this child.” — Giulia Amati---Source: https://www.giornatedegliautori.com/en/program/kristos-the-last-child-eng/

According to Jan Švankmajer, museum exhibits are ordered rationally, while the Kunstcamera is an irrational showcase. This holds true also for this film with which the leading Czech surrealist personality decides to finish his cinema career and his close cooperation with the producer Jaromír Kallista. Very playfully, he approaches works of art, curiosities and everyday objects that he and his wife Eva had assembled over many decades inside a former Renaissance granary in the Bohemian village of Horní Staňkov. These immobile objects come to life thanks to Švankmajer’s traditional methods of composition and Antonio Vivaldi’s music. Dalí, Štýrský, Toyen, dog’s food bowl and the creaking floor all create an organic whole, stirring imagination and creative passion.“I have always been fascinated by the image of Rudolph II’s Kunstcamera. Not necessarily by the real art treasures included in the Emperor’s collection, but by the non-artistic, sometimes even lowly portions of objects, artefacts and other curiosities that used to be its part.” Jan Švankmajer---Source: https://program.lfs.cz/detail/?film=The-Kunstcamera

Since time immemorial, people have been trying to understand, describe and imitate birdsong and translate it to their own language, perhaps hoping to learn to communicate with birds. This film which is told from the perspective of a future era after the sixth mass extinction of species is conceived as an ironic overview of the history of the attempts to establish this kind of interspecific communication. Through a series of encounters with musicians and music theorists, the film poses the question whether birdsong only serves a biological purpose or whether it has any poetic qualities and/or fixed rules. However, the often absurd effort to discover the secret of the bird language is motivated not only by curiosity but also by an unsettling desire to dominate.“The main idea of the film is that of translation. I do not believe in an immediate relationship with the animal, our relationship is always mediated by third parties, technical agents.” — Érik Bullot---Source: https://blogs.mediapart.fr/cinema-du-reel/blog/110322/entretien-avec-erik-bullot-realisateur-de-langue-des-oiseaux

Ondřej, a student and teacher; Denisa, a lawyer; and Petr, a policeman, are all Romani who have enjoyed a world of opportunity in Britain, something that’s hard for them to come by in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This multi-layered, yet rather intimate documentary, which contains a number of scenes shot by the protagonists themselves on their mobile phones, depicts the everyday worries and small victories of the three main characters who represent an educated and ambitious, yet still vulnerable community of Europeans, and who help embrace the opportunities offered to others. In addition to exploring themes of displacement and the search for one's own identity in a post-Brexit world, the film – which features humanism interspersed throughout – also asks how the characters’ fates were shaped by the COVID-19 epidemic.“The film has developed over the past 4 years. The pandemic forced us to adopt a new filming concept of using iPhones to record our protagonists' lives with intimate access, which presented an opportunity to reveal the community from the inside. The choice of the equipment was designed to ensure they could easily get used to the camera, and this material has quickly become the core of the film, with crew-generated material available for flashbacks to the pre-Covid era.”---Source: https://www.cinelinkindustrydays.com/2021-docu-talents-from-the-east/one-more-question

After completing seminary training, a graduate becomes a priest in the Orthodox Church only if he marries or becomes a monk. Vitalij and Łukasz delay this moment, living in a shared flat surrounded by books where they devote themselves to their hobbies – philosophical discussions and choral singing. This sensitively composed documentary explores non-conforming friendships that develop within a conforming institution. On the one hand are the pressures caused by expectations tied to social function, on the other is the individualistic experience of the joy of merely existing in the interim, especially when it finds support in the family and among close people.“Will the bond between the protagonists turn out stronger than their religious obligations?”---Source: https://www.krakowfilmfestival.pl/en/online-cinema/film/3547-light-years/

Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German avant-garde composer, pioneer of electronic music, visionary, mégalomane and author of a seemingly unrealizable project. In 1977, he started to work on his opera project, Licht. It included seven opera pieces, hundreds of artists and four helicopters. He finished it 26 years later, only a few years before his death. The 29-hour long production was never realized in the composer’s lifetime. Only in 2019, this challenge was undertaken by the Dutch National Opera. The film is an adventurous chronicle of origins of one of history’s most magnanimous music productions, as well as an intimate portrait of Stockhausen himself. “As an artist, I really got involved with his music much more than before I started. It’s not always that you can say ‘I like his music,’ but you can feel that there is such a large spirit behind it.” (Oeke Hoogendijk) ---Source: https://businessdoceurope.com/cphdox-interview-licht-stockhausens-legacy-by-oeke-hoegendijk/

The film is a glimpse into the everyday life of one of many Georgian women working as live-in maids in Greece. A short testimony on separation, a life lacking in background and privacy, a difficult and low-paid job and importance of human decency, providing these women with a force preventing them from surrendering into the feelings of inferiority.“Working as a live-in maid is not a job, it is a sacrifice.”

This combined film melds together not only different techniques but also different thematic topics. The titular mythical figure is just one of the actors in this dreamworld speaking to a contemporary audience in codes of media and narratives that are dear to it. Like a vision or nightmare trapped in the loop of a computer prism.>The frozen white noise, static snow >That is your memory >Although I know we'll never meet >You're in every part of me.---Source: http://marinah.eu/stuff.html

In Belarusian, “mara” means “dream,” but in the sense of “hope.” In Slavic mythology, the word denotes a female spirit that manifests in people's minds while they sleep and brings either dreams or nightmares. An artistic personification of the mythical being Mara roams through the streets of Minsk in 2020–2021 in the film of the same name. During the anti-dictatorship protests that took place, it served as a symbol of the hopes and subsequent horrors experienced by the Belarusian citizens demanding to have their basic rights and freedoms. For the director, Mara is her alter ego incarnate, which in poetic shorthand allows her to talk about her most personal fears and desires in the face of an unpleasant reality that’s hostile towards dreams.“I didn’t want to make a typical ‚reportage‘ film. For me the most important thing was to show what trauma does to the human psyche.”---Source: https://eefb.org/country/belarus/sasha-kulak-on-mara/

Marek “Mara” Holeček is one of the most noted mountain climbers of our time, both in the Czech Republic and worldwide. He is known for climbing atop the highest mountains, high enough to touch the sky, all without oxygen and in a demanding Alpine style. His extreme approach to mountain climbing and life brings him great success, but also many problems. The film Mara Goes to Heaven follows his five attempts at the first ascent atop the challenging mountain of Gasherbrum I, located in the Karakoram Mountain Range in Pakistan. We catch sight of the surroundings through the eyes of Mara Holeček and those around him as well as through the eyes of those who wait to see if they will make it back alive. The successful expedition ended up being his fifth attempt, but the film also follows the unsuccessful attempts before it that ended in tragedy. During those first four attempts, Mara lost several toes to frostbite and also lost a friend and a fellow climber who both fell to their deaths right in front of him from a height of thousands of feet.

Eldar, a film student and transgender man, prepares to visit his conservative Russian grandmother, who has no idea that she no longer has a granddaughter, but a grandson. In this autobiographical film, he chronicles his transformation into his former female identity for the purpose of this visit, while preparing his film. In it, a fictional encounter takes place in which he comes out to his grandmother – just not the real one. The documentary is a personal account of identity and intergenerational conflict in the post-Soviet world.“There is nothing to say about my grandmother. She had the life of an ordinary Soviet woman: Pioneers, the Communist Party, a cheating husband, an incessant household. She devoted her whole life to raising children: my mother, and then later me. I hope that it paid off considering how it turned out.” (Eldar Basmanov)

Two icons of world religion and the struggle for freedom meet for the first time after many years apart to discuss the search for joy in today's complicated world. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, a Buddhist and the spiritual leader of Tibet, and Desmond Tutu, a South African archbishop and fighter against apartheid, are long-standing friends who tackle wickedness with a wicked sense of humor. The film reconstructs their lives and the political events that shaped them as political and spiritual leaders. In this unique footage of their conversation, they lead a mission in search for joy, finding support along the way from the findings of modern scientists' and the ideas of literary figures.“You are made for perfection. You are not yet perfect, you are a masterpiece in the making.”

The unceasing monologue of the distinctive regional painter Jiří Bakala ranges thematically from blunt denunciations of political conditions, through subtle recollections of moments of personal happiness, to existential reflections on the meaning of existence. He does all this with a paintbrush in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other.“But I know you shouldn't do that. But I like the way it burns. I want to maintain some kind of freedom.”

Belgrade’s Museum of the Revolution was meant to become another Brutalist monument celebrating socialism in Yugoslavia. Its construction plan later failed and this desolate building from 1961 is now a refuge for homeless people. Among them is a young mother with her child and Mara, an aging woman. Their lives could not be placed further away from the utopian visions of the perfect world. The Serbian filmmaker Srđan Keča moulded his 2014 video installation into a documentary, a humble glimpse into a fragile personal cosmos lying aside from all social structures. It takes note of a world amid emptiness, on the brink of state affairs, outside of the major population’s field of vision, with human lives flowing slowly through.“There’s a whole genre of socialist ruin porn, especially in photography with Yugoslav monuments, representing them as if some alien civilization built them and playing with SF [science fiction] tropes, but these monuments have histories and represent histories.”---Source: https://povmagazine.com/srdan-keca-on-museum-of-the-revolution-and-documenting-paradise-lost/

The latest discovery from the Filipino archives, an ethnographic documentary from 1913, rewrites the history of cinema. It was created nine years before the Robert Flaherty film, Nanook of the North, which, thus, makes it the world’s first-ever, feature-length documentary film. In a series of five scenes, the film depicts various aspects of the lives of indigenous peoples. It presents one of the few positive effects of colonization, which brought cinema to the Philippines. The owner of the film was the Secretary of Interior Affairs for the Philippines, Dean C. Worcester. He shot the film at the end of his political career before embarking on a lucrative lecture tour across the United States.

Abdi spent his childhood in Mogadishu during the civil war. Now he designs and makes furniture in the Netherlands. In the past, he repeatedly witnessed violence and war crimes. After he emigrated, he broke the law himself and ended up in prison. His neighbor happened to be filmmaker Douwe Dijkstra. Together, they decided to reconstruct and take a better look at Abdi's childhood and youth full of traumatizing incidents. Besides not-always-reliable memories, their tools include Dijkstra's special-effects studio with a green screen and many miniature models. The film is both a biography and a stimulating deconstruction of an effort to grasp someone else's past.“My process is very investigative, working through research and experimentation. But then I also find that in this ‘making of’ approach, it is never about the technical side of things. For me, it’s always about showing the perspective of me as a filmmaker, or the way I relate to the topic or to my protagonist or subject.” — Douwe Dijkstra---Source: https://businessdoceurope.com/locarno-ff-neighbour-abdi-by-douwe-dijkstra/

A modern-day aborigine, alone on a deserted planet, surrounded by cold nature, builds a new world from the remnants of an extinct civilization. This surreal audiovisual work reflects on the question of human existence when the world is on the verge of destruction, evoking the mourning of an activist artist over an ecological catastrophe.“The motto of the Native character, who wanders the landscape with unbounded imagination, is to translate sentiment into creative new approaches. This is probably the only way to cope with the current state of affairs.”---Source: Comment on the video

The film follows a burnt-out artist who has found an alternative way through life. However, the same cannot be said about the film's director, who is still waging an internal battle about meaning of life. --- This film was made during the My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Marika Pecháčková and Jan Sacher. The film received third prize of the My Street Films Award.

The first vernissage of Disgusting Pictures by the author Nosičhoven (Shitcarrier) captured in similarly disgusting and sometimes a bit funny way. --- This film participated in the film competition My Street Films Award. The film received special mention.

The film opens with Travis Wilkerson's childhood memories shaped by the Cold War and his mother's obsession with the atomic bomb. Having lived in constant fear of a nuclear holocaust, he would often be haunted by nightmares. After Donald Trump's electoral victory, the nightmares came back. In an effort to understand the root cause of his neuroses, the filmmaker embarks on a therapeutic road trip across the United States. He’s joined by his daughters and his wife, who is also the co-creator of this documentary. Together, they visit missile launch facilities known as “nuclear silos” and other places linked to the annihilation of indigenous peoples. Their family trip becomes the underlying basis for the pervasive criticism of a national ideology that’s founded on mass destruction and raising fears.“The film is a story of our land — even though it never belonged to us personally —, our family, but also of all the violence against the indigenous people, without which we wouldn't be living there today.” — Erin Wilkerson---Source: https://www.melodieundrhythmus.com/mr-2-2022/strahlende-zukunft/

Czech gay males and lesbians were already advocating for their rights in the First Republic (1918–1938). In 1961, the criminalization of homosexuality was abolished. Following this milestone, however, the issue remained a grey area within the context of progressive European legislation and was never discussed.One of four episodes of the Orgasm Chronicle filmed for Czech Television's online iVysílání segment.

In the 1950s, Czechoslovak sexologists endeavored to investigate a phenomenon whose significance and meaning was eluded by science – the female orgasm.One of four episodes of the Orgasm Chronicle filmed for Czech Television's online iVysílání segment.

Switzerland is one of the few European countries that still has mandatory military service. This film provides a glimpse behind the walls of the barracks, where soldiers participate in the required drills and exercises, but also find ways in which to alleviate boredom. We watch young recruits during daily activities: eating, cleaning, and video conversations with the surrounding world. However, the montage also includes the vlogs of men who have already completed their military training and share their experiences, anecdotes, and frustrations over the internet. In this way, the problematic aspects of a militarized society appear in between entertaining excerpts from military life.“The people who shared the room with me would wail / yo, I don’t want to always hear hip hop first thing in the morning / I said, I don’t care, I have to destroy these bad feelings from the military.”---Source: Rap by a soldier from the film Over Our Hills (28:40-28:56)  

Hortence has been pregnant four times in her life and she is a mother of seven children. She takes good care of all of them, but four of them are wooden statuettes. According to voodoo, which counts as an official religion in Benin, twins dispose of a strange mystical power, which bestows on them almost a divine status. “Twins are reincarnation of the gods on Earth. They come into the world with an inexplicable mystical force.”

An idiot for some, a genius for others. Zoran is an urban legend of a Serbian block of flats who allegedly travelled the whole world without a single ID on him. After that, he went nuts due to politics, war and MDMA. “I saw it with my own naked eye,” nodded a half-blind old man. Though a clear answer to the question who Zoran really was is not to be expected at the end of this semi-serious manhunt, it is more than sure that even if he did not exist, the locals must have had to think him up.“I’ve known the guy since I was seven years old, I’ve got endless stories.”

The directing duo meets and talks to veterans of the Portuguese colonial war to record their memories, experiences, and feelings. But it’s not just about the storytelling – it’s about meeting and sharing them. The interviews are interspersed with archival footage, suggesting that the film is not just a nostalgic spectacle, but a reflection on war and the price of peace in general.“There is a continuum, we are aware that, looking at history, peace is almost a utopia, and we took those images for one thing because it was the war that went on over the years and which seems to haunt us, which is very old and visceral.” — Marta Ramos---Source: https://comunidadeculturaearte.com/entrevista-jose-oliveira-e-marta-ramos-para-fazer-um-filme-tem-de-haver-um-compromisso-com-alguma-realidade/

Blurring the lines between documentary and fiction, this recent work by Michal Mitro presents a new semblance of our future world in which energy, as a universal and indestructible force, determines the order of global activities and relationships. The film is a reflection on what a post-capitalist society can look like when energy justice prevails and when both human and extra-human factors are involved.“The visual language of this work juxtaposes the workings of society where energy justice has been established through speculative archaeological research conducted in a contemporary communal garden from the viewpoint of future's utopia.”---Source: https://dspace.vutbr.cz/xmlui/handle/11012/195152?locale-attribute=pl

Štefan Pongo and his family left the Czech Republic for Britain to escape racial stereotypes and discrimination. To have a normal life. And they did—that is, until he decided to respond on the internet to the racist rhetoric of Czech President Miloš Zeman. The truck driver’s fate then took a major turn. The sensitively conceived personal and family portrait is a film-argument that juxtaposes simplistic, chauvinistic assessments with a full-blooded picture in which race issues are more of a problem to be solved than a lived reality. It tells the story of a journey there and back, across countries, beliefs, and our conscience.“I was wondering how the Roma who had emigrated to the UK were doing, so I went there and tracked down a trucker named Štefan Pongo and his big, wonderful family.”---Source: http://www.romea.cz/cz/kultura/premiera-dokumentarniho-filmu-pongo-calling-probehne-v-patek-na-mezinarodnim-filmovem-festivalu-docfest-v-sheffield  

The editor of internationally acclaimed films, e.g. Ida, Cold War or Quo vadis, Aida?, is Jarosław Kamiński, a FAMU graduate. A native of Łódź, Poland, he takes a walk through his city in this short, refined film portrait, remembering his childhood when he used to run away from school to the cinema, and reflecting on his ties with today’s Poland and yesterday’s Prague alike. “I remember one day when I ran away from my school to the cinema. It was a French film.” — Jarosław Kamiński

Is the movie camera a neutral medium, or is there an ideology behind it? The film's directors investigate how racism is written into the development and current format of filmmaking technology. Their online debates during film production show how controversial the topic is. Although white people are no longer the only ones standing in front of and behind the camera, film equipment is still adapted to white skin. The film consists of three diverse essays in which the authors share their own personal experiences with the bias of technology, confront stereotypical thinking about the film, and demonstrate how truly different it is to capture dark and white skin on film. “For me cinema is the people, those who see it and take it with them back to their reality.” (Rosine Mbakam)

This experimental work from duo Alexandra Morales and Georgy Bagdasarov resembles a digital theatrical performance that plays out on a computer screen. The inner monologue of a philosopher of morphology, artificially created from neural networks, generates texts in the paradigms of Vilem Flusser, Günther Anders, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Byung-Chul Han and many others and is managed by a human operator who explores the possibilities of generative system performativity. „The performance presents an attempt to peer critically into the black box of individual generative models, but questions remain as to whether in the end their program has simply been expanded with more or less likely configurations and at what price technology brings these new possibilities.“

The combination of queer cinema and engaged documentary delivers an urgent message about the need for social transformation. It works with the juxtaposition of the sexual minority and the 1986 revolution in which the regime of dictator Ferdinand Marcos fell. Freedom can only be achieved by transforming socio-economic and political structures.

Using light-splitting prisms, cellophane, sparklers, and ping-pong balls, the film attempts to represent what happens in the mind when listening to Grieg's score for the play Peer Gynt. The circular dance of shapes and lights drowned in darkness is structurally and rhythmically linked to the musical composition, their relationship anchored by a mathematical formula.

A melancholic documentary portrait of Robert Frost shows the American poet and the winner of 4 Pulitzer Prizes in the autumn of his life, when he is reflecting on his personal life, his poetry and the existentialist and philosophical themes he pondered on in his own works. Frost is spending his days in beloved rural New England while still lecturing at the universities and the eye of the camera transforms this legendary American poet into a universally humane, simple man. This is the first feature documentary by Shirley Clarke and the one which received the Academy Award in 1963.“The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the lost champion of the individual mind and sensibility, against an intrusive society and officious state.” — John F. Kennedy

The Islamic State is usually presented as an elusive, disembodied evil, materializing only during terrorist attacks. Director Zaynê Akyol decided to look the vague threat in the face and give it a concrete form. She gained unique access to dozens of detained jihadists from around the world, interviewing their wives as well. Instead of the interrogations they’re used to, she lets them talk freely about their childhoods, their faith, their dreams and experiences, and the history of the feared organization. She juxtaposes their chilling vision of a worldwide caliphate—which they refuse to give up even after the fall of ISIS—with aerial footage of Syria, decimated by fanatics like them who put ideology above human life.“It was a very emotional film for me to make. That is why I went to meet the Other, this enemy of the world, to listen and try to understand him. Of course, such a tête-à-tête would never have been possible were it not for the pretext of filmmaking.”---Source: https://womenandhollywood.com/hot-docs-2022-women-directors-meet-zayne-akyol-rojek/

A collage of influences, spoken sentences, deeds, traces, and appearances of the Brno poet and prose writer Jan Skácel. Contemporary cultural figures regard the author as a social and cultural phenomenon. The directors of this documentary, on the other hand, decided to treat Jan Skácel as a subject of literary and social history, whose role in the cluster of regime and cultural events is unwavering and often – nowadays – glorified or otherwise embellished. In the film, they attempt to distance themselves from the established ideas about Jan Skácel and, at the same time, from past interpretations of Jan Skácel’s work. Instead, they interpret him through their own series of images.

What does the world look like from a non-human perspective? This surprisingly poetic film, which can be boldly described as an example of pure cinema, takes us on a journey through the seasons using security camera footage from various parts of the world. Individual, seemingly neutral snippets of life look like moving canvases with paintings or postcards that allow us to see places we could never otherwise visit. The cameras, like surveillance tools, reveal the unexpected beauty of industrial spaces, private buildings, and natural landscapes.“Self-Portrait takes charge of its own interpretations, imaginings, and fictions for each moment, but aims still to leave room for the subjectivity of viewers, allowing them to find their own meaning or to slip into their own fictions.”

A meditative film revealing urban and natural recesses crossed by endless nooks of industrial piping intertwining its surroundings like a Uroboros serpent. The pipes guide the camera eye across large fields and blocks of flats, connecting canoeists, kids at play and a bubbling stream, serving as silent witnesses to their living existence.„Jsme tu společně a naše činy ovlivňují další lidi a prostor, ve kterém se nacházíme.“---Source: https://afo.cz/host/sarah-lomenova/

The film is a probe into the romantic relationships and sexual adventures of young gay men whose lives deviate from traditional heteronormative ideas. In intimate conversations with several protagonists, they discuss dating in the queer community, polyamory, and unfulfilled love. The scenes consist of colorful animations inspired by Arabic fairy tales, theatrical play scenes with explicit nudity, and musical numbers with Arabic pop songs. The stark contrasts between the different narrative forms support the ironic tone of the film, which explores the possibilities of true love outside of society’s expectations.“It's a remarkable collection of tales that inventively and honestly explore masculinity through a queer eye.”---Source: Rich Cline Review, 26. 9. 2022. http://www.shadowsonthewall.co.uk/22/d11.htm#shal

The popularity of the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage continues to grow. Four Czech pilgrimage stories also inspired a new pilgrim, who has just embarked on his long journey. He steps out of his comfort zone to not only discover the magic of the pilgrimage, but also to find himself. When a pilgrim meets a pilgrim on the way to Santiago de Compostela, their first question is clear: “Where are you coming from?” Because every step counts. This is evidenced by four pilgrims’ stories: Kvakin, who came from Boskovice; Olga, who managed her own pilgrimage at an older age; Mario, whose journey summoned him on its own accord; and Peter, who was paralyzed in half his body but got up from his wheelchair and hit the road. We also follow the pilgrimage of Kamil Bartošek, better known as the entertainer and mystifier Kazma Kazmitch.

Pier Luigi, called Gigi, is a rural policeman who spends his days investigating minor offenses, flirting with a new colleague over the radio, and arguing with his neighbor about his overgrown garden. But one suicide case keeps him up at night, and he begins to investigate whether there is something more behind it. The slow narrative, absurd situations, and the protagonist’s character evoke European art films. The pleasant atmosphere of the unforced passage of time and the stories from the life of Gigi and the people around him create an engaging, empathetic, and at times dreamily poetic film.  “A poetic comedic documentary reminiscing of Tati’s Mon Oncle.” — Cirriere della Sera ---Source: https://shellacfilms.com/international-sales/gigi-la-legge

This cult collage of archival footage from the 1940s to the 1960s offers an absurdly humorous look at life in the atomic age. A subversive juxtaposition of American propaganda films, educational films, commercials, and newspaper reports, it presents a media image of the world in which those now in their 60s grew up. Cold War paranoia and the threat of nuclear war seeped into their lives in many bizarre ways. The media of the time created a kind of hypothetical universe, a paradoxical nuclear culture of exploding nuclear bombs, war heroism, and pop songs with atomic themes.“The Atomic Café suggests a certain sickness in the country’s soul, daring to poke fun at our perverse brew of utopianism and paranoia.”---Source: https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/07/31/newly-restored-the-atomic-cafe-is-just-as-vital-as-ever/

This humorous documentary takes us back to the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War, when the car was considered not only a small miracle and a key symbol of technological progress, but also a means of fighting the imperialist class enemy, while paradoxically representing an almost unattainable social status. However, the journey of people who were able to choose their dream car even from the small handful of available socialist brands and wanted to step towards a better tomorrow was often tortuous and lasted for decades. This nostalgia-soaked film odyssey, composed of several autobiographies of Trabant lovers and Muscovites for whom the car means more than a means of transport, presents a fascinating automotive history and the hardships of the socialist era.“We are quite interested in the psychological reasons of the people’s attachment to these cars that is going on even today. It is a strange form of nostalgia - not so much for the Socialism or the youth, but for a time when a vehicle was reparable with your own hands and a few simple instruments. Most of the drivers had to learn the guts of their cars, if they wanted to have a moving vehicle - and knowing your car from the inside created a much stronger bond between the man and the machine.”---Source: http://www.agitprop.bg/?fbclid=IwAR3saJ0PCSaA-x2D4Fbb6U4PZn_7X8JnXPAFggLfWe-ixAxDdeX_HS9qEL0#/works/WATCH

20 years ago, a car ran over a man at a pedestrian crossing in Prague's Čimická street. It was my dad. I couldn't walk across that crosswalk for years. A short poetic film from a place that has a special meaning for me and a glimpse into the relationship with my father. --- This film was made during the My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Marika Pecháčková and Jan Sacher. The film received first prize of the My Street Films Award as well as Student Jury Award.

Director Nataša Urban left her native Serbia many years ago. But now, through her father’s travel diary and conversations with family and loved ones, she returns to the places where she grew up and which have since become ravaged mementos of the war in former Yugoslavia. Human and concrete remains are all that are left in the villages where the author used to walk with her parents. The overwhelming history of the Balkan peninsula is eating away at the smaller, family ones – happy memories of childhood are overpowered by what has been dredged up from the uncovered mass graves. Looking at the bloody images of Yugoslav history is as painful as looking directly at a solar eclipse.“Then, in order to cover it up, they destroyed the POW camp in 1992, one year after they set it up. And people would come to pick the bricks from a nearby village, on tractors to take the bricks to use them to build a church in that nearby village.”

In December 2020, the pandemic caused the cancellation of all performances the filmmaker had arranged for a small experimental theatre in Queens, New York City. She and her partner, a composer, decided to move into the theatre for two weeks and perform every night for an absent audience. The film consists of a mixture of genres and forms, from stand-up performances, to monologues about art and life, to musical installations. Combined with documentary footage of everyday actions, the film reveals the tragicomic fate of an artist in quarantine, whose work is meaningless without a live audience. “The joke doesn’t exist without an audience.”

This film applies historic data to link the recent epidemic with migration, colonization and xenophobia in order to create a context for the events in the world struck with the COVID-19 pandemic. Using voice-over and collages of archival videos, photos and newspapers, a story of recurring models of human behaviour at times of crises is told, revealing an unfavourable basis of so-called civilization.“So we should be thinking about outbreaks as somehow metaphorically reminding us of the social disorder that we need to address.” (Patricia J. Williams)

A compilation of scenes from classic Hollywood films, in which a man is touching a woman’s elbow, attributes a deeper meaning to the simple gesture. It does not matter if the man is helping the woman to get on a train or if he is assaulting her; the gesture gradually becomes more and more sinister, emphasizing sexist subtext, ubiquitous in classic Hollywood cinema.“One of the things we learn in movies directed by men is what the ‚fantasy woman‘ is. What we learn in movies directed by women is what real women are about.“ (Jane Campion)---Source: https://www.inspiringquotes.us/author/7660-jane-campion

CEO salaries are skyrocketing. The wages of ordinary employees have increased only slightly. According to one survey, a fifth of workers view their bosses as rivals. Most of them aren’t happy in their jobs and don’t find them fulfilling. To better understand this dynamic, John Webster takes the ideas of anthropologist David Graeber and returns to early factory models. Today’s employees describe the reality behind the glossy corporate facade: stress, incompetent management, and burnout syndrome. A black-humored analysis of capitalist work seeks to answer the question of whether it is possible to be happy at work today. „I do hope it encourages people to talk in the workplace about what is going on – probably half to two thirds of the people [in offices] feel the same – and to question the way things are done.“ — John Webster ---Source: https://businessdoceurope.com/cphdox-interview-the-happy-worker-or-how-bullshit-took-over-the-workplace-by-john-webster/

Animals exhausted by the unbearable weight of existence, existential frustration and everyday squabble. Humans as empty puppets waiting for the command from the director or romping actors frenziedly protecting their fragile egos. A theatrical, multidimensional performance inspired by the author’s frustrations and artistic (dis)illusions.“We have a problem with you; we have a problem with us. We’re afraid to speak without metaphors.”

Even after more than 25 years since the dreadful war crimes had been taking place in former Yugoslavia, this tragic history is far from over – be it for the victims’ families, conflicting nations or for a Czech investigator who comes back to the region to carry on in his work after so many years. The documentary return voyage follows not only the paths of fleeing war criminals, but is driven by an effort to capture a part of the ethic mission of the then newly formed International Criminal Court in The Hague along, in its double nature: based on an independent investigation of war crimes, to strive for reconciliation in cases of multifarious ethnic, national and other conflicts.“The International Criminal Court has successfully condemned only a small part of war criminals in former Yugoslavia – one hundred of the conflict’s major perpetrators carrying either military or political responsibility. Naturally, these solved cases definitely retain a symbolic meaning.”---Source: https://www.denik.cz/ze_sveta/jugoslavie-valka-chorvatsko-20210815.html  

Even after more than 25 years since the dreadful war crimes had been taking place in former Yugoslavia, this tragic history is far from over – be it for the victims’ families, conflicting nations or for a Czech investigator who comes back to the region to carry on in his work after so many years. The documentary return voyage follows not only the paths of fleeing war criminals, but is driven by an effort to capture a part of the ethic mission of the then newly formed International Criminal Court in The Hague along, in its double nature: based on an independent investigation of war crimes, to strive for reconciliation in cases of multifarious ethnic, national and other conflicts.“The International Criminal Court has successfully condemned only a small part of war criminals in former Yugoslavia – one hundred of the conflict’s major perpetrators carrying either military or political responsibility. Naturally, these solved cases definitely retain a symbolic meaning.”---Source: https://www.denik.cz/ze_sveta/jugoslavie-valka-chorvatsko-20210815.html

War is no joke. But does that mean you can't joke about war? Stand-up comedian Mariana Shama fled from Kiev to Prague. Here she wonders if it is appropriate to joke in tragic times.   This film was made during the My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Zuza Piussi and Adam Oľha.

In her intimate film-poem, the auteur uses abstract paintings as a means to observe the changing forest landscape. What starts off as green and strikingly familiar is later struck by fire and burned to a crisp with ashes becoming an integral part of its new form. Can the land victimized by a destructive force rise up from the ashes like a phoenix and be reborn anew?“Just as I am now composing words for myself, I was composing particles of dust side by side in an attempt to understand how things relate to one another. Minerals of ash that move in the form of our needs.”

The last Prior, an unrenovated socialist department store, no longer meets the standards of modern shopping centers. It rather resembles a well-preserved open-air museum where time has stood still to allow its peculiar inhabitants to relive the eighties indefinitely. A film about what it looks like when genius loci swallows everything around it. “Nothing makes sense here.”

In this documentary film inspired by Winfried Georg Sebald’s book of essays of the same name, Sergei Loznitsa addresses whether it’s ethical to use civilians as targets for achieving one’s warfare aims and whether their use as a means of mass destruction can at all be morally justified. The montage of archival footage depicts German cities being bombed out by Allied air raids during World War II and offers a horrific testimony to the destruction and its cataclysmic consequences that have in many circles remained a taboo topic.“If we look at my current film, it looks at a principle that has become acceptable, almost standard, since the Second World War. Targeting the civilian population is now practically a rule of war strategy. At the moment, this principle is on display in Ukraine, but before, the same thing was happening in Syria, and the world seemed to just look on disinterested. I think this idea, this principle, of mass destruction needs to be analyzed and reflected upon, not just by the politicians, but by philosophers, by anthropologists, by sociologists, by all those who study human society.” — Sergei Loznitsa---Source: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/ukrainian-director-sergei-loznitsa-history-destruction-cannes-2022-1235151641/

An eccentric Polish couple owns one of the largest pawnshops in Europe, where together with three dedicated employees they try to earn a living every single day. They buy and sell almost anything you can imagine: religious relics, sex books, mammoth teeth, you name it. At the same time, they’re also highly valued members of their Silesian small-town community where they’re seen by their fellow citizens as good Samaritans and therapists. This tragicomic film, which uses the at-times absurd and diverse pawnshop as an example, thematizes the socio-economic problems of the Polish border: from poverty and a lack of jobs to alcoholism and domestic violence.“It's the kind of tragicomic gaze that makes this film such a pleasure to watch, and the fact that the titular pawnshop is located on Perseverance Street really does say it all.” (Marta Bałaga)---Source: https://www.cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/423793/

The unsuccessful attempt of polar explorer Roald Amundsen to reach the North Pole by air in 1925 is the subject of a unique archival documentary. The footage, shot in the icy wasteland on a 16mm camera, is supplemented by artificial post-synchros imitating the crunching of snow, the rumbling of wind, and other sounds from the end of the world.“How to represent the conquest of a place that is an absolutely empty geographical abstraction?”---Source: https://marvinwayne.com/en/la-banquisa

A babysitter, a bunch of laborers, and a long-haul truck driver. All were born in Slovakia, but after the country joined the EU, they took the opportunity to work elsewhere in the Schengen zone. During week-long work shifts in Austria, Germany, or on European motorways, they try to get used to their foreign environments while struggling to maintain contact with their children and partners. For their future, they left for better-paying jobs. Now they are losing them by their absence. They don't know what awaits them when they return home. A trio of saddening stories compose a laconic portrait of a globalised labour market that allows people to fulfil their dreams, but often at great sacrifice.

An audiovisual essay using a digitized, 8mm format that addresses questions of what the essence of contemporary art is and who it's made for. The film, which is divided into nine chapters, is based on practical experience and the works that are on display in the Gandy Gallery in Bratislava. It examines the relationship between the artwork as a whole and its features, signatures, and also institutional background.“The works of art resemble the things around us, mysteriously reflecting reality. Institutions are also similar to the objects we know. They mirror the way we act.”

Petr Nikl is a founding member of the Tvrdohlaví (Hard Headed) art group. He is an intermedia artist with classical roots who freely and convincingly expresses himself through traditional art techniques and original books, interactive projects, and improvisational events based on performance, theatre, and music. He won the Jindřich Chalupecký Award in 1995, is a multiple winner of the Best Book Award, and received the Golden Angel Award in the Alternative Music category in 2005. Petr Nikl looks back on his life and his career and gives an imaginary vision of where his path will lead in the future.

The northernmost city in the world, Longyearbyen, is the most populated settlement in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. A Czech social anthropologist attempts to make a new home for herself here with her family whilst also researching social transformations in the local community. The loss of jobs in the mining industry, as well as the complicated relationship between Norwegian natives, foreign immigrants, and tourists all contribute to the city's change of atmosphere whilst the surrounding snowy mountains melt and avalanches threaten the daily existence of the local population. This portrait of the microcosm of an ice town is a raw glimpse into the contemporary globalized world.“Still, such charm carries a risk. Since if everybody came here to enjoy the clarity and space, soon there’d be neither.”  

A meditative symphony on the city and death. The filmmaker returns to places where he, 18 years earlier, had made a film about suicide. Now, in the crowded streets of Tehran and in the city’s rundown corners with flanked walls, he searches for the reasons that had led three sisters to end their lives together.“Their lives summarized in a few sentences; sentences are all in the past tense, there is no future nor present.”

The protagonist of the film is Pavel, a pensioner who keeps hoarding things in his apartment. Pavel is convinced of the value of his collection although he doesn’t actually know it. The film is a meditation on the issue of hoarding and the need to own things in general. The filmmaker enhances the image with the help of rotoscoping, intensifying the emptiness of the captured space.“I figured out I’m my own worst enemy. To fight your own self is the hardest.” — Pavel, the protagonist

Martin Imrich lives and studies in Prague. But he comes from South Moravia, where he makes a pilgrimage on foot to overcome the contradiction between “tím, kým jsem, a tím, kým jsu” (“who I am” in Czech and the Moravian dialect), as he says. His video diary, accompanied by a frank off-screen commentary, captures in fragmentary form the journey to the roots and the search for the meaning of such an artistic project.“Vlašim and Benešov are the most disgusting places in the world, and I pity all the people who have to live there.”

For thirty years now, a dilapidated house has been providing essential asylum to war refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh. Three generations, including the children and grandchildren of people made to leave their homes, struggle to scratch an existence on the outskirts of Baku. They are faced with common problems: loss of home, outrooting, sadness and illnesses. “Since the end of the second war, I have often dreamed of our own home.”

Naoto Matsumara is the only person permanently residing around the Fukushima nuclear power plant where, in 2011, a major nuclear incident occurred. Matsumara decided to stay in this exclusion zone and now devotes his time to taking care of the abandoned animals. This observational documentary is a reflection on the disasters caused by man-made technology and on the environmental crisis and its consequences. The film is part of the We Have to Survive documentary project, which aims to draw attention to the current and future effects of the climate crisis.“That's mankind. They all agree so long as it's comfortable for them. If there are hard times, nobody cooperates. And that's how we'll end up.” (Naoto Matsumara)

Time is not linear, but rather a loop that has no beginning or end. Life doesn't move forward, but instead zigzags back and forth between what we want and what we’re meant to do. This is why sometimes we find ourselves at a crossroads in the middle of the night with nothing left but to ponder which of the three paths we must take as the rain washes down on us. “Whenever I take a look at myself, I always wish I loved myself more.”

We all need juggling. Training attention, increasing speed, improving physical condition, connecting brain hemispheres. Enjoying community. At any age. Senior Circus! --- This film was made during the My Street Films workshop under the guidance of Marika Pecháčková and Jan Sacher. The film received second prize of the My Street Films Award.

Yoyogi is a park located in the center of Tokyo and the setting as well as the main character of this documentary. However, it is not the director’s intention to present the history of the park – apart from the opening title, the audience will not learn any facts about it. The documentary without voiceover captures the park and its visitors only with a static camera and soft editing. Children playing on a monument, a couple on a bench hugging under an umbrella, young men competing in a rap battle, a homeless man passed by somebody, a girl making a TikTok video, a group of black men singing a song in a foreign language. A meditative observation.“This film combines two strange and seemingly overlapping peculiarities. On the one hand, there is a distant, almost scientific in its dryness, observation of ordinary scenes of people’s life in the park, on the other hand, a feeling of some kind of magic and the impossibility of what is happening.”---Source: https://allfilm.ee/work/yoyogi-haiku/

Using the method of pure observation, Viktor Németh focuses on depicting the life in ZONA (one of the last ghettos in Amadora, Lisbon), raising a lot of questions: is it an art group, community, or simply a lifestyle? Fragments of visually inventive pictures, shattering sounds of electronic music mercilessly flowing from loudspeakers and blurred frames of interactions, inaccessible to us, only intensify the mythicized character of ZONA.“It is quite well known that there are still some 'ghettos' really close to the center of Lisbon. … These neighborhoods are mythicized as places so dangerous and ungovernable that even the police wouldn't dare set foot in them. In reality, the inhabitants of these areas are forming a very strong and tight community.”---Source: additional text by the director