- Occupation
Producer, Director - Country
Czech Republic
Hníková Erika
I Guess We'll Meet at the Eurocamp
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?
The Beauty Exchange
The perfect female body is a big issue in today's world. This feature documentary is about the media constructing the ideal of female beauty, about women who create the ideal and those who submit to it.
Our Class
My schoolmates from the elementary school after ten years... FAMU, Department of Documentary Film (3rd year)
Four Steps Two Halves
A 15-year-old girl lives in a small village in Moravia. She wants to leave this place. What are her chances for escape?. - Department of Documentary film, FAMU - 2nd year.
E Day
1st May 2004. The Czech Republic along with nine other states joins the European Union. Before the midnight comes, three young authors find themselves at three different locations of the country. Vít Janeček is shooting in the capital, Erika Hníková is in Jablunkov, the easternmost place of the country, and Ivana Miloševič in the westernmost city of Aš. Three different filmmaking styles are united in one documentary, capturing social and mental history of a single moment. And against the backdrop of the historical moment, discovering different opinions of people from different social classes, they are trying to capture the first fundamental change of the Czech state. This unconventional concept of the living history captured in transience and discontinuity of impressions tries to go beyond the initial invisibility of change, in order to stress the co-existence of our national self and the world around us. The three different directorial styles symbolize its incoherent possibilities.
Weekend Partiers
Part of Ta naše povaha česká (Our Czech Nature) cycle follows an all night alcohol party of a group of young people who spent every single Friday this way. On their way through night Brno, they answer questions by which the crew together with a sociologist and psychologist try to find out what the reasons are for this end-of-the-week fun. At the end of their almost physiological journey, they discover - hidden behind the drunken banality of twentysomethings - an originally unexpected but surprisingly present undertone of racism and xenophobia.
Returnees from Osek
Documentary film on the starnge men from the Osek monastery which asks, who the men are and why they are there. FAMU, Documentary Film Department (1st year)
Landa´s elixir of love
A drama called The Secret of the Golden Dragon (Tajemství Zlatého draka) premiered at the National Theatre in Brno in Autumn 2008. This documentary film is not focused on the evaluation of the play or its artistic merit. The filmmakers try to look into the transformation of Daniel Landa - one of the play's authors - from his status of a "skinhead bard" in the early nineties up to the present when he acts as one of the co-founders of the Golden Dragon Legion. Does his immense energy still involve some latent menace from his dark past or is he merely a showbiz star?
Matchmaking Mayor
A situational documentary film about a village mayor trying to match local people in their thirties who are still single. Slowly but surely, the Slovak village Zemplínské Hámre is dying out. Its mayor, a retired general, doesn't want to give up though. Fighting the thirty-year-olds' loneliness, he has used various means such as offering a financial reward for each newborn child or encouraging people to make children in the local public address system. None of it has worked. However, the mayor has a new plan. He decides to organize a dating party for singles from all the neighbouring villages. Will the protagonists finally find their partners? In its theme and approach, the film represents a continuation of Erika Hníková's previous successful films "The Beauty Exchange" and "I Guess We'll Meet at the Eurocamp". The film was awarded in Berlinale IFF 2011.
Three Gifts
"Three Gifts", a documentary by Erika Hníková, takes us to the remote mountainous areas of Northern Afghanistan and presents a bit different picture of the country currently known mostly from the war reporters. The movie looks behind this curtain and shows the daily life of three families, which became beneficiaries of the People in Need program focused on improvement of vulnerable livelihoods. 37-year old Qandy has ten children, bakes bread and takes care of her small chicken farm. Seabjon with her daughter Malika learned how to weave carpets. And Hosain is the first and most successful beekeeper around.
24
A documentary collage about the progress of one Czech day, composed by 24 directors. Everyone picked one hour, day or night, and received two minutes of the whole film at his or her disposal. This allowed for the mosaic on genres and topics that portrait the atmosphere of the Czech Republic today. At the same time, this unique project presents various filmmaking styles and approaches of the best contemporary Czech documentarians, all on the reel of one film. The authors accompany teenagers at a discotheque, observe doctors during surgery, laborers in a factory, believers in a synagogue or the descent in a human throat. Olga Špátová records the authentic power of the moment when the child is born. Vít Klusák engages a special camcorder to freeze the time of one tram stop. The flow of time is Helena Třeštíková’s topic – she films Katka taking yet another public bath in a Prague’s fountain. Martin Mareček shows a pair of legs sunk in aquarium, which, backed with a voiceover, illustrates the timeless power of human stupidity. Jiří Krejčík, a significant persona of Czech film, conceived his film hour with a great amount of humor and exaggeration.
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?
The Beauty Exchange
The perfect female body is a big issue in today's world. This feature documentary is about the media constructing the ideal of female beauty, about women who create the ideal and those who submit to it.
Our Class
My schoolmates from the elementary school after ten years... FAMU, Department of Documentary Film (3rd year)
Four Steps Two Halves
A 15-year-old girl lives in a small village in Moravia. She wants to leave this place. What are her chances for escape?. - Department of Documentary film, FAMU - 2nd year.
E Day
1st May 2004. The Czech Republic along with nine other states joins the European Union. Before the midnight comes, three young authors find themselves at three different locations of the country. Vít Janeček is shooting in the capital, Erika Hníková is in Jablunkov, the easternmost place of the country, and Ivana Miloševič in the westernmost city of Aš. Three different filmmaking styles are united in one documentary, capturing social and mental history of a single moment. And against the backdrop of the historical moment, discovering different opinions of people from different social classes, they are trying to capture the first fundamental change of the Czech state. This unconventional concept of the living history captured in transience and discontinuity of impressions tries to go beyond the initial invisibility of change, in order to stress the co-existence of our national self and the world around us. The three different directorial styles symbolize its incoherent possibilities.
Weekend Partiers
Part of Ta naše povaha česká (Our Czech Nature) cycle follows an all night alcohol party of a group of young people who spent every single Friday this way. On their way through night Brno, they answer questions by which the crew together with a sociologist and psychologist try to find out what the reasons are for this end-of-the-week fun. At the end of their almost physiological journey, they discover - hidden behind the drunken banality of twentysomethings - an originally unexpected but surprisingly present undertone of racism and xenophobia.
Returnees from Osek
Documentary film on the starnge men from the Osek monastery which asks, who the men are and why they are there. FAMU, Documentary Film Department (1st year)
Landa´s elixir of love
A drama called The Secret of the Golden Dragon (Tajemství Zlatého draka) premiered at the National Theatre in Brno in Autumn 2008. This documentary film is not focused on the evaluation of the play or its artistic merit. The filmmakers try to look into the transformation of Daniel Landa - one of the play's authors - from his status of a "skinhead bard" in the early nineties up to the present when he acts as one of the co-founders of the Golden Dragon Legion. Does his immense energy still involve some latent menace from his dark past or is he merely a showbiz star?
Matchmaking Mayor
A situational documentary film about a village mayor trying to match local people in their thirties who are still single. Slowly but surely, the Slovak village Zemplínské Hámre is dying out. Its mayor, a retired general, doesn't want to give up though. Fighting the thirty-year-olds' loneliness, he has used various means such as offering a financial reward for each newborn child or encouraging people to make children in the local public address system. None of it has worked. However, the mayor has a new plan. He decides to organize a dating party for singles from all the neighbouring villages. Will the protagonists finally find their partners? In its theme and approach, the film represents a continuation of Erika Hníková's previous successful films "The Beauty Exchange" and "I Guess We'll Meet at the Eurocamp". The film was awarded in Berlinale IFF 2011.
Three Gifts
"Three Gifts", a documentary by Erika Hníková, takes us to the remote mountainous areas of Northern Afghanistan and presents a bit different picture of the country currently known mostly from the war reporters. The movie looks behind this curtain and shows the daily life of three families, which became beneficiaries of the People in Need program focused on improvement of vulnerable livelihoods. 37-year old Qandy has ten children, bakes bread and takes care of her small chicken farm. Seabjon with her daughter Malika learned how to weave carpets. And Hosain is the first and most successful beekeeper around.
24
A documentary collage about the progress of one Czech day, composed by 24 directors. Everyone picked one hour, day or night, and received two minutes of the whole film at his or her disposal. This allowed for the mosaic on genres and topics that portrait the atmosphere of the Czech Republic today. At the same time, this unique project presents various filmmaking styles and approaches of the best contemporary Czech documentarians, all on the reel of one film. The authors accompany teenagers at a discotheque, observe doctors during surgery, laborers in a factory, believers in a synagogue or the descent in a human throat. Olga Špátová records the authentic power of the moment when the child is born. Vít Klusák engages a special camcorder to freeze the time of one tram stop. The flow of time is Helena Třeštíková’s topic – she films Katka taking yet another public bath in a Prague’s fountain. Martin Mareček shows a pair of legs sunk in aquarium, which, backed with a voiceover, illustrates the timeless power of human stupidity. Jiří Krejčík, a significant persona of Czech film, conceived his film hour with a great amount of humor and exaggeration.
Erika Hníková (1976) is a documentary filmmaker and journalist. She graduated at Department of Documentary Film, FAMU with the full-length documentary The Beauty Exchange that was released in Czech and Slovak theatres. Her latest documentary I Guess We'll Meet at the Eurocamp was screened at many festivals, including DOK Leipzig and Hot Docs.
Profilm
nám. Jiřího z Lobkovic 2235/4
130 00 Prague 3
nám. Jiřího z Lobkovic 2235/4
130 00 Prague 3
Endorfilm s. r. o.
Přímětická 4
140 00 Prague 4
Přímětická 4
140 00 Prague 4
Docu Talents from the East 2010 - 2010
„SEJDEME SE V EUROCAMPU“ (I GUESS WE´LL MEET AT THE EUROCAMP)
- IDFF Jihava 2006 – The Prize for Second Best Documentary in Czech Competition
- Prize of Czech Film And Television Association 2006
"ŽENY PROMĚNY" (THE BEAUTY EXCHANGE)
- IDFF Jihlava 2003 - The Audience Prize
- FAMUfest 2003 – The Prize for Second Best Film