Czech Dream/Český sen

Thursday | May 31 | 8 pm

Czech Republic | 2004 | 87 minutes | directors: Vít Klusák, Filip Remunda | director of photography: Vít Klusák | editor: Zdeněk Marek |

An unconventional project of two FAMU students Vít Klusák and Filip Remunda employed the curiosity of Czech society with its theme as well as demand for its creation. The directors managed to create a mass advertisement campaign for a product which actually did not exist, however it appeared to be real thanks to the agency responsible for the precise propagation of unbelievably convenient goods. All customers were lured by them into a mall, wittingly called “Czech Dream”, supported by slogans of figurative meaning: “Don’t spend”, ”Don’t hustle”, or “Surprise for everyone” . Even though many people had found the attractiveness of the Czech Dream mall offers rather suspicious, only a few of them would have missed the opportunity to be amongst the first ones to see their consumer dream themselves, personally, at the climax of the campaign – the opening day of the new mall. Only the directors, and later also the movie spectators, knew that the tension and expectation was supposed to be interrupted and interchanged by disillusion, disappointment, and also anger.

The campaign led by two new-born fake managers – the directors themselves, provided material for the movie Czech Dream released exactly one year after the unique opening day. Although the point was already exposed, the final point of view was to be completed, and yet expressed. The movie, which tracks the whole process of the creation of the fake promotion, as well as the reflection in the media and opinions of the public, combines features of a documentary with reality show. Spectators are shown how the PR agencies work, the different specialists employed for an advertisement to work effectively, or how an image of a product influences our reception thereof. We can see the directors/actors discovering this machinery with us, for us, and by using us. People took part in the movie from the moment they saw the promotion on billboards or flyers, while as viewers of the movie, take part in the example conspiracy against themselves. This distorted reality was created to manipulate, to elect discussion, and to shoot the documentary as the final product of filmmakers who managed to express themselves in a style that might not be moral, appropriate, or even acceptable. However, the newly coined term “Czech dream” tells us to be cautious of any naïve expectations.

Ondřej Kuhn

Daddy and Lili Marlene, A Low-Level Flight/Tatíček a Lili Marlén, Nízký let

Thursday | May 17 | 8 pm

Czech Republic | 2005, 2006 | 2x 52 minutes | screenwriter and director: Jan Šikl | editor: Jan Daňhel, Šimon Špidla | sound editor: Daniel Němec |

“Our lives are unique and unrepeatable. The Private Century series shows the history as a set of intimate human stories. Their intensity can adress also the others because the fundamental events happen in the lives of each of us.”

The Private Century, a unique project done by Jan Šikl, makes use of extensive though little known amateur footage from individuals, thus creating a different image of the troubled twentieth century. The project, not yet finished, comprises so far of six one-hour long documentaries, each focusing on one member of a family and telling of their decline and fall – King of Velichovky focuses on the head of a German farmer family living in Sudetenland before WWII; Daddy and Lili Marlene, a sequel to the King of Velichovky, is narrated from the point of view of his granddaughter and tells of the disintegration of the family in the dramatic 1950s. Statuary of Granddad Vinda is a story of a non-conformist Moravian sculptor, the author of a Klement Gottwald sculpture, which, together with The Stoke of Butterfly Wings reveals the hidden, personal face of communist ideology from the perspective of its followers.

Small Russian Clouds of Smoke and A Low-Level Flight return to the family concept – they tell a story of Russian families that emigrated to democratic Czechoslovakia and settled here despite the unfavorable political situation after 1948. Low-Level Flight is a recollection of a daughter of a Russian who married a Czech Army pilot, accompanied him on his ambitious career to the Soviet Union, and whose marriage collapsed, as well as the Czechoslovak democratizing process, after the invasion in 1968.

The stories of The Private Century contrast the official history of “big” events and personalities with personal histories of their victims. The heroes of the Private Century films are mostly anonymous “crowd people” facing personal twists and catastrophes on the background of political turmoils. The form of family movies that Jan Šikl uses in this cycle is an unprecedented homage to hundreds of amateur filmmakers who never had a chance to hit the screen but who give voice to and rehabilitate the memory of the silent majority of the nation.

Veronika Klusáková

Never Been Better/Nikdy nebylo líp

Thursday | April 26 | 8 pm

Czech Republic | 2006 | 65 minutes | screenwriter, director: Ivana Miloševič | director of photography: Gašper Šnuderl | editing: Evženie Brabcová

A Bosnian director living in the Czech Republic returns to her native country and gives a portrait of the Balkans. After ten years in exile, Miloševič opens painful topics, which agitate this troubled part of Europe, connecting them with her pragmatic approach to Czech citizenship.

The original title of this film by a Bosnian director Ivana Miloševič was „Ten years after“. It was to reflect her ten years spent in the Czech Republic. The title was changed to „Never Been Better“ during the final phases of the shooting and better describes the author´s attitude to her native country showing she is not indifferent to the contemporary situation in this restless region.

After the initial montage of war reports, the director invites us on a journey corresponding with a Bosnian proverb: „To understand your country you have to set out on a path of songs.“ Music plays a crucial part in the film. Traditionally, songs reflect all passions and injustice of the Balkan nations. The image of contemporary situation in the coutries torn by war agonies emerges from various encounters. Although the film touches upon the political situation of Bosnia, in its form it is rather an apolitical probe into the soul of the Bosnian people.

By reflecting the contemporary situation on the Balkans, the director unfolds her own attitudes and views. She is intuitive in the selection of shots in the editing process. The film closes by her vow during a ceremony of becoming a Czech citizen, this change, however, is only seen from the practical point of view. Miloševič is not dogmatic in her method nor presented views, she allows enough space for the spectator´s own reflections and views.

Petr Vlček

Kha-chee-pe/Chačipe

Thursday | April 12 | 8 pm

Czech Republic | 2005 | 57 minutes | screenwriter, director of photography, director: Miroslav Janek | editing: Tonička Janková | music: Jaroslav Kořán

This strangely called film, Kha-chee-pae is not a traditional documentary from the point of view of the method used to gather material. For several years, director Janek had been going with children from a children´s home on a vacation to France. He would bring a trick camera and teach children to use it. When later he had decided to make a documentary about the children, he had realized that, in fact, he already had plenty of material. He himself just gave the film its structure and shape. Janek does not take the children as objects but as partners, co-authors. By giving the camera to the children and also to their nurses we are offered authentic footage of the environment in which they live. But the film is not restricted to simple recording of reality. The children shoot animated sequences together, act and shoot small scenes, or experiment with film material. Beside trick and standard camera with which they created animated sequences, they had a chance to shoot on 16mm black and white film. Thanks to this spontaneous way of working and mainly to mutual trust the children give a testimony about their world and their tough life. The film is very well rhytmically crafted. The dynamic, chaotic shots or crazy scenes made by children during their free time are alternated by pieceful details of faces, mature or naïve, playful and poetic animations. But despite various style, used throughout the film, the result is a whole. All sequences are connected either by music or by voice of one of the protagonists. Janek usually focuses on one child whose story, animation, or scene is being shown. Fictitious funny scenes full of violence, alcoholics and madmen speak very well about what the children went through during their life and what they are missing. On the other hand the animated sequences are full of joy, sensibility and playfulness. Music helps to describe and highlight the atmosphere. Besides pieceful tracks of Jaroslav Kořán, Janek also works with rhytmical and sometimes mystical ethno style. Camera in the hands of the children breaks a wall between two worlds. It is a toy as well as an instrument which enables to confess secrets, to cope with desperation and to overcome sudden sadness.

Adéla Doudová

Dust Games / Hry prachu

Thursday | March 22 | 8 pm

Czech Republic | 2001 | 100 minutes | director: Martin Mareček | director of photography: Jiří Málek, Vít Janeček, Vít Klusák, Martin Řezníček, editing: Petr Mrkous |

After having directed several student films (mostly philosophical essays concerning clear activistic statements about the current social, political, and ecological environment and a responsible attitude towards it - Maple 98, Theatre in a Sewage Plant, Methods of the Egg), Martin Mareček started to work on his graduation film, in which he managed to capture the preparations of the Annual Meeting of the IMF and the World Bank, held in Prague in 2000.

Using a modest set and a limited number of staff, Mareček started to monitor the twisted situation around this huge event, which had its pragmatical, political and social impacts while it confronted the domestic antagonistic and antiglobalistic tensions towards the event.

Martin Mareček appears a patient viewer capable to deal with extremist viewpoints and attitudes without being demagogic or cynical. His Dust Games are variations of political games in a broader sense, with their own rules and their relative value. All of the „actors“ of these dust(y) games are people and their special limited functions - from a common girl volunteering at the summit, a man selling expensive sleeping bags to antiglobalist protesters or the head of Blaník theatre and the organizer of primitive indoctrination programmes for high school students.

Theatrum mundi concentrated in this feature documentary, is packed with conflicting interests, beliefs, anger, and visions of profit, whether symbolic (political, social) or real (financial, emotional). Martin Mareček managed to create an extraordinary documentary, showing the local on the background of the global and the other way round. His film shows to the Czechs their own dullness, hypocrisy, and Philistine nature. It also points out that our local conditions very much depend on abstract political decisions made in the area of global politics.

Dust Games is a breakthrough documentary, an encyclopedia of Czech activist issues represented by a clever film. For this attitude and achievement, Mareček won the first prize for the best Czech documentary film of the year 2001 at the International Documentary Film Festival in Jihlava and also the Audience Award the same year.

Pavel Bednařík

The Beauty Exchange / Ženy pro měny

Thursday | March 8 | 8 pm

Czech Republic | 2004 | 77 minutes | screenwriter and director: Erika Hníková | director of photography: Marek Janda | editing: Jakub Hejna |

The featurelength film Beauty Exchange is Erika Hníková´s graduate film from FAMU. Released in 2004, it was met, along with the similarly socially engaged Czech Dream (Vít Klusák, Filip Remunda), with good critical acceptance. The film deals with women and their relationships to their bodies under the pressure of economics and the media. Hníková´s method is similar to the global trend of activistic filmmakers like Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11) or Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me). In contrast to them, the director does not put herself to the center but lets her protagonists dominate. They are four women she found via an advertisement – Karolína, an economy student whose shopping habits and bathroom stuffed with expensive cosmetics indicate how much money she spends on her beauty; Eva, a worker who invests her money into several mammoplastics; the fourteen-year-old Zuzana who plans to become a professional model and therefore follows absurd demands regarding her weight; and Magda, struggling with her excess weight with the help of various pills, coctails, teas, patches, or „slimming“ CD records. The effort to change their bodies is not primarily motivated by their careers (with the exception of Zuzana) or by their partners. They are led to this by an irrational urge, an unspeakable passion to fullfill ideals presented to them by beauty magazines. The media are represented by an editor-in-chief of a fashion journal, the other side of the issue by members of an anarchist feminist group. To give more views on this subject the director adds alibistic testimonies of a plastic surgeon and a celebrity with artificial breasts. The outcome of this documentary is not meant to be a „scandalous“ revelation of financial-media manipulation. This is present in short advertisement sequences which are interlaid with statistics about millions spent on the products of fashion industry. However, Hníková does not seek false objectivity. Her opinion is obvious right from the very beginning. She does not use her protagonists as puppets, she maps their different and inconsistent approaches and thinks about this problem. She is open to external impulses which are changing situations and meanings. She balances very well on the edge of objectivity and empathy. Beauty Exchange is not cynically malicious, purposelessly ironical or tragically sentimental with crying moments of protagonists and touching music. It is a tragicomic and authentic piece of our times.

Miloš Kameník

HOT DOCS!

Contemporary Czech documentary films dominate over feature films in significance, impact and quality, and it might be said that they also tell more about contemporary Czech society. The Czech Filmz project is not ignorant of this fact. Therefore it will present some of the finest examples of this growing tendency during the summer semester of 2007. We chose to present different faces of Czech documentary film to indicate its social scope as well as formal inventiveness.

The project starts with an internationally comprehensible testimony of how beauty industry and media shape our ideas of beauty and manipulate them (The Beauty Exchange by Erika Hníková); follows by an insightful look into the events around the meeting of the IMF and the World Bank in Prague in 2000 (Dust Games by Martin Mareček), a social experiment of Miroslav Janek who gave the camera to children from a children´s home (Kha-chee-pae), and a personal film about the feelings of the Bosnian director Ivana Milosevič who visits her native country ten years after the end of the war there (Never Been Better). Found-footage method is represented by Jan Šikl´s Daddy and Lili Marlene and Low-Level Flight, personal stories contrasted with the country´s official history. The project will close with a provocative and infamous Czech Dream, a film that tells about Czech society more than we would probably like to. Enjoy the various faces of Czech documentary film – now you have the unique opportunity!

Thursday | 8.3. 2007 | 20:00
The Beauty Exchange | Ženy pro měny | 2004

Czech Republic ׀ 2004 ׀77 minutes ׀ screenplay and director: Erika Hníková ׀ cinematography: Marek Janda ׀ editing: Jakub Hejna ׀

Erika Hníková´s feature-length debut revealing the phenomenon of contemporary media-made ideals of feminine beauty. On the example of four women – a beginning model, an ageing woman fighting her overweight, a student spending thousands on cosmetics and worker undergoing a mammoplasty – Hníková comments on possible approaches to one´s own body.


Thursday | 22.3. 2007 | 20:00 |
Dust Games | Hry prachu | 2001

Czech Republic | 2001 | 100 minutes | director: Martin Mareček | cinematography: Jiří Málek, Vít Janeček, Vít Klusák, Martin Řezníček | editing: Petr Mrkous |

A breakthrough documentary, an encyclopedia of Czech activist issues, and a clever film in one! With a limited number of staff Martin Mareček started to monitor the Annual Meeting of the IMF and the World Bank, held in Prague in 2000 from various angles and perspectives. The result was awarded the first prize at the 2001 IDFF Jihlava and acknowledged at other festivals.

Thursday | 12.4. 2007| 20:00
Kha-chee-pe | Chačipe | 2005

Czech Republic ׀ 2005 ׀57 minutes ׀ screenplay, cinematography, director: Miroslav Janek ׀ editing: Tonička Janková ׀ music: Jaroslav Kořán ׀

A social documentary that will not make you feel guilty. With a camera in their hands children from children´s homes invite the spectator into their bleak reality as well as rich imagination. A unique, playful and unsentimental documentary by the editor of Godfrey Reggio´s Powaqqatsi and Anima Mundi.

Thursday | 26.4. 2007 | 20:00
Never been better | Nikdy nebylo líp | 2006

Czech Republic ׀ 2006 ׀ 65 minutes ׀ screenplay, director: Ivana Miloševič ׀ cinematography: Gašper Šnuder ׀ editing: Evženie Brabcová ׀

„In order to understand your country, you have to set out on a path of song.“ Born in Sarajevo, now a czech citizen, Ivana Miloševič went to Bosnia and Herzegovina a decade after the end of the war to film a polyphonic portrait of this historically, socially, and politically divided country.

Thursday | 17.5. 2007 | 20:00 |
Daddy and Lili Marlene, A Low-level Flight | Tatíček a Lili Marlén, Nízký let | 2005, 2006

Czech Republic | 2005, 2006 | 2 x 52 minutes | screenplay, director: Jan Šikl |sound editor: Daniel Němec | editing: Jan Daňhel, Šimon Špidla |

Jan Šikl´s Private Century cycle is a unique set of documentaries contrasting the official Czech history of 20th century with personal histories of the country´s inhabitants. The use of amateur family footage gives the cycle unprecedented authenticity and intimate feeling. Czech Filmz will present two parts of the cycle – Daddy and Lili Marlene and A Low-level Flight, telling stories of two daughters – of a German farmer living in Sudetenland before WWII and of a Russian emigree to Czechoslovakia.

Thursday | 31.5. 2007 | 20:00
Czech Dream | Český sen | 2004

Czech Republic ׀ 2004 ׀87 minutes ׀ directors: Vít Klusák, Filip Remunda ׀ cinematography: Vít Klusák ׀ editing: Zdeněk Marek ׀

They built a fake hypermarket and fooled thousands of people – was it mere provocation, bad joke or an act of social activism? Two FAMU students became top managers to show the public how PR agencies work and how Czech shopping habits changed. Come and watch the most controversial Czech documentary shot after 1989.