Premiere: February 7, 2008 / 19:30 / Bio Oko
Other Screenings: February 8 - 10, 2008 / 19:30 / Bio Oko
The project was presented at the 2002 East European Forum.
HOME (DOMOV)
Czech Republic 2007, 55 minut, 16mm/8mm/DVCam
Director: Margareta Hruza
Producer: Pavel Strnad (Negativ), Margareta Hruza
Photography: Petr Koblovský, Jakub Šimůnek
Editor: Lucie Haladová, Tonička Janková
Editing Dramaturgy: Josef Valušiak
Sound: Tomáš Kubec
Music: Dominik Renč
This is a personal exploration of the physical and mental repercussions of emigration. In 1969 a pregnant 18-year old girl flees her country with her married lover as the Russian tanks roll into the streets of Prague. They end up in Norway. They have a daughter. They become successful in the world of theater. At the height of fortune the beautiful mother decides to send her 14-year-old daughter away to America. They are never to live together after that.
The movie is an emotional journey of the daughter trying to map the disintegration of the family. It is an intimate story of her own family, with gleams of her childhood in Norway, her exile in USA, and her "return" to the Czech Republic. Scenes of lonely characters set in different landscapes inter cut with tragicomic meetings of family members who live their separate lives in various countries. The author is searching for answers in Prague, Oslo and Los Angeles trying to find out where her true home really is.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Margareta Hruza was born to Czech immigrants in Oslo, Norway in 1969. She was raised in a world of theater and opera as both her parents were stage designers. After being sent to USA as a 14 year old she enters ISU, Iowa State University when she was 16 and completed a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Anthropology in 1990. Instead of going to Nigeria to study witchcraft and medicine she decided to move to Prague where she became a project-coordinator for the newly established Ministry of the Environment.
She did her post-gradual studies at University of Wisconsin, Madison, between 1992 and 1994. In 1995 she stopped in Prague on her way to Hong Kong where she was going to get married and decided to drop the wedding-plans and entered FAMU, the Film Academy of Arts, in Prague. She received a Master in fiction film directing in 2004. During her studies she shot several short movies and documentaries. She has published several articles on film theory in Film a Doba.
documentary films
Home, doc. 56', November 2007.
Night Talks, doc. 55', September 2004 for ARTE
12 Daring, doc., 10', 2004 for Czech state television Prima / Febio Production
Three Oaks, documentary, video, '20, 2000
The Mask, documentary, 16 mm, '5, 1996
Rite of Passage, documentary, video, 8', 1996
short fiction
Wedding gifts, fiction, 35 mm, '15, 2000
Thorn, fiction, 35 mm, '8, 1998
Johnny Be Good, fiction, 16 mm, '5, 1996
awards
2001 2nd prize at Famu festival, for directing Wedding Gifts
2002 1st prize for Best film and Best Directing at Umebertide International Short Film Festival, Italy
For more information, please visit www.homethefilm.cz (from Feb 7, 2008)