- Occupation
Director - Country
Czech Republic
Zapletalová Veronika
Summerhouses
The art documentary film Summerhouses will capture the rapidly disappearing, specifically Czech phenomenon, the architecture of summerhouses. It is about summerhouses in which the striking personality of their builder – in the negative or positive sense – is reflected. They are the embodied form of human dreams, for these buildings create their own worlds which are an escape from the reality of the everyday. They are not emergency shelters; they are the architecture of an abstracted human happiness. The changes in society are reflected in them under the pressure of the time, the fettered human longings, opinions, a certain type of ‘trampish Romanticism‘, a longing for nature, for freedom, but also for community and creativity, linked with a do-it-yourself instinct, and a relative absence of religion. In the Czech countryside they are impossible to overlook and at the same time rapidly and irretrievably disappearing.
The art documentary film Summerhouses will capture the rapidly disappearing, specifically Czech phenomenon, the architecture of summerhouses. It is about summerhouses in which the striking personality of their builder – in the negative or positive sense – is reflected. They are the embodied form of human dreams, for these buildings create their own worlds which are an escape from the reality of the everyday. They are not emergency shelters; they are the architecture of an abstracted human happiness. The changes in society are reflected in them under the pressure of the time, the fettered human longings, opinions, a certain type of ‘trampish Romanticism‘, a longing for nature, for freedom, but also for community and creativity, linked with a do-it-yourself instinct, and a relative absence of religion. In the Czech countryside they are impossible to overlook and at the same time rapidly and irretrievably disappearing.
Born June 27, 1971 in Prague. Studied Art History at Charles Univeristy in Prague, continued at Prague’s Academy of Art, Architecture and Design (VŠUP). Also Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, Academie Beldeende Kunsten, Netherlands, Academy of Fine Arts, Prague. Focused on landscape painting, three-dimensional work, various artistic crafts and materials (mosaics, graphic arts techniques, ceramics, sculpture techniques, metalworking, blacksmithing, welding, photography, textiles, drawing. Completed her degree at VŠUP in the Sculpture Studio headed by Kurt Gebauer. Thesis project: Krajinky (Little Landscapes), a series of 30 landscape sculptures. Other projects: Rourouni (Pipesters, photography); Summer Houses (photography, sculpture); Místa – Bukurešt (Locations – Bucharest, photography); Auta – vozítka (Automobiles – Vehicles). Also a designer for several films, e.g., Newsreel (Aktualita, 2000, short animation, dir. Pavel Reisenauer, Helena Dušková); Stop the Violence on Children (Stop násilí na dětech, social ad, dir. M. Zábranský).