Industriální elegie / Industrial Elegy
Director: Gébová Daniela
Producer: Vlčková Renata
Completion :2006 Length: 70
Format: DVD
Language: Czech
Subtitles: English
A visually poetic documentary about people living in the mining colonies in Ostrava that are gradually being shut down. As this world slowly disappears, we also lose the local traditional values, unique experiences and important memories of remarkable people who live very tough lives.
Daniela Gébová
Sejdeme se v Eurocampu / I Guess We'll Meet at the Eurocamp
Director: Hníková Erika
Producer: Procházková Jitka
Completion :2005
Length: 58
Format: DVD
Language: Czech
A documentary about a village with no traditional Czech pub on the square, but a Eurocamp on the periphery instead. A film about opportunities and about the ironic reality of a Czech village in the European Union. What is there to unite the inhabitants of the village of Běšiny? The present time confuses them, their traditions are nearly extinct and new opportunities are as nebulous as the past. The European reality of this Czech village is bound by the uniformity of the past and the tension of interpersonal relations. Three "uniformed" associations still operate in the village - a voluntary fire brigade, a hunting group and the Sokol organisation. Their only common meeting point is the derelict pub Zenit on the square, reminiscent of a time when they all co-existed and sorted things out face to face. Can a deserted gym or a strange Eurocamp built on the edge of the village with EU money replace the pub as the meeting point?
Erika Hníková
Půl čtvrté / Half Past Three
Director: Hodan Tomáš
Producer: Becková Anna, Beránek Ondřej
Completion :2006
Length: 75
Format: DVD
Language: Czech
Subtitles: English
A documentary film about peculiar and unconventional people living in a peculiar and unconventional place. After several visits to the easternmost region of interwar Czechoslovakia, a director and a cinematographer decided to revisit the place; this time with a film camera, to bring back a message about the peaceful yet original everyday life of the locals. With a slightly detached point of view, they follow the uneasy life of several individuals who were not able to choose their destiny, but who refuse to grumble about it.
Tomáš Hodan
Kupředu levá, kupředu pravá / Left, Right, Forward
Director: Jablonská Linda
Producer: Kuchynka Milan
Completion :2006
Length: 72
Format: mini DV
Language: Czech
Subtitles: English
In our documentary film, we follow members of two very different organizations: the young communists and the young conservatives. Through their lives and ideas, we will try to understand why these young people link themselves with politics and how that influences their lives. In the end we will probably find out that although the communists hate the conservatives and vice versa, both these organizations work on the same principles and the motivations for joining them are basically the same.
Linda Jablonská
Ztracená dovolená / Lost Holiday
Director: Králová Lucie
Producer: Řezníček Martin
Completion :2007
Length: 84
Format: 35 mm
Language: Czech
Subtitles: English
A documentary detective story. Lada, a Czech traveller, finds by chance a dirty suitcase in a Swedish waste bin. It contains only a very carefully packed plastic bag full of film rolls. Lada takes all of the 22 film rolls home to Prague and has them developed. There are 756 fascinating photos from a trip of seven Asian men, probably from China. Lost Holiday tells the story of the search for these unknown tourists, based only on the lost photographs. We would like to give the photos back to them. And so the unknown men from Asia become guides on our exciting journey as we search through the lost photos and also for the nature of contemporary man.
Lucie Králová
Houslový rytíř / The Violin Knight
Director: Marek Pavel
Producer: Šlajer Vratislav, Bionaut Films
Completion :2006
Length: 52
Format: DVD
"The eyes of the white man see different things than I do, than we Roma people do," said Marek Balog when the filmmakers started shooting the Violin Knight. Since that moment, this brilliant violin player wanted to have absolute control over the documentary about his life. During filming, he patiently tried to assert his own vision of a "gypsy documentary" until he finally managed to move the disoriented director of the project to the very fringe of the process. Balog decided to create a real, unbiased image of the gypsy world, without the limitations of realism and any rules of plausibility. And so he did. Marek Balog's spontaneous and reckless vision fuses various genres and styles. The film quickly stumbles off any standard path of documentary filmmaking. It takes sharp turns, veering away from the limits of elementary comprehensibility, only to sudddenly reappear within the audience's sight on the horizon of the amazing gypsy imagination.
Pavel Marek
Nikdy nebylo líp / Never Been Better
Director: Miloševič Ivana
Producer: Stojáková Karla
Completion :2006
Length: 65
Format: mini DV
Language: Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian
Subtitles: English
Budget: 525000 Kč/ 17500 EUR
People know very little about present-day situation of Bosnia and Herzegovina even though it has almost all model examples for various social and political problems. Never Been Better is a satirical and personal insight into a suffering country whose destiny has deeply influenced the lives of its citizens as well as the film's director.
Ivana Miloševičová
Český fenomén: Taneční / Czech Phenomenon: Dancing Lessons
Director: Šafařík Bernard
Producer: Dvouletá Renata
Completion :2006
Length: 77
Format: Beta Cam
Language: Czech
With a humourous distance, Dancing Lessons examines a phenomenon unique to Czech national culture - dance courses. The director followed a Prague dance class for more than a year - from the signing up, the balls, through to the last class, capturing the transformation of insecure, self-conscious youth into self-confident young ladies and gentlemen.
Bernard Šafařík
Události Pavla Štechy / The Events of Pavel Štecha
Director: Třeštíková Helena
Producer: Becková Anna
Completion :2006
Length: 55
Format: Digi Beta Cam
Language: Czech
Pavel Štecha is one of the leading Czech photographers and documentarists. His black-and-white photos from 1968-89 are well-known, but his photographs of ordinary life from the period are also of crucial importance - cottage-goers, shops, streets and the clothing of the time... In his art, he often managed to capture features of the Czech character. The film visits him at a time when his life is dominated by a serious illness.
Helena Třeštíková
Záviš - kníže pornofolku pod vlivem Griffithovy Intolerance / Záviš - The Prince of Porno-Music under the Influence of Griffith's Intolerance
Director: Vachek Karel
Producer: Procházka Radim
Completion :2006
Length: 140
Format: 35 mm
Language: Czech
Subtitles: English
Tracing a three-legged dog and biped director on a journey through the Czech present and Czechoslovak past: the four-year-old Edvard Beneš saves the lives of his parents, the sixty-year-old Václav Klaus plays and does not play tennis, a statue bangs its head against the wall. People fight in ketchup and bury their dogs. A collapsed house, a house made of cannabis and a millionaire's villa. Polar bears, ants, falcons and foxes. Songs of Milan Záviš Smrčka. The world according to Karel Vachek.
Karel Vachek
Rozpomínání / Reminiscences
Director: Vojnár Ivan
Producer: Vojnár Ivan, Procházková Jitka
Completion :2006
Length: 62
Format: Digi Beta Cam
Language: Czech
Subtitles: English
Are Czechs happy? What do they strive for? Are Czechs impassive or do they desire personal and social changes? What is the feeling of a contemporary citizen of Prague, the capital city of the Czech Republic? In March 2006 Ivan Vojnár's documentary searched for answers to some of these questions focused mostly on the reflection of personal issues and feelings. Has the social and political climate changed considerably since 1989? A waitress at an international hotel is setting tables for breakfast. Her feeling is that "not much has changed since the Revolution, perhaps just traveling, people are weary, they don't know who to vote for. I have a daughter who is to go to college, the things that we are facing, I am quite scared of all of it." Are the answers truthful or are they partial self-stylizations? Are the Czechs prone to accepting certain roles and masks? What is the problem? How to get rid of it? The film is not offering solutions; it just explores the ideas of present-day Czechs. French documentary filmmaker Jean Rouch says that cinéma vérité is not about representing truth but about truthful representation. Director Ivan Vojnár drew inspiration from public inquiry films from the 1960s: Jean Rouch's Chronique d'un été (1961), Chris Marker's Le Joli mai (1962) and the film of moral discomfort by Czech filmmaker Evald Schorm - Zrcadlení.
Ivan Vojnár