- Country
Czech Republic
Brabcová Evženie
Never Been Better
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. Department of documentary film, FAMU - graduate film.
Mr. Mireček
Mr Mirecek, mysterious visit and a little bit of homespun philosophy. Super 8 mm film about loneliness. In colour and with music.
Ladies in White
Damas de Blanco is a film about an unofficial social movement of Cuban women who are under strict surveillance by Castro's regime. Those women are wives, mothers and sisters of political prisoners. Their husbands, fathers or brothers have been imprisoned for years because they in some way expressed their doubts about political leaders and the system in Cuba. In most cases, they signed a petition for more freedom and multi-party system in Cuba, wrote critical newspaper articles etc. At the moment, the movement has some 60 active women members. Regular Sunday mass is the only activity they manage to do together. They organize protest marches on the Avenue in Miramar (a district in La Habana), all dressed in white and carrying pink flowers in their hands. The film depicts 12 most important Damas: their dreams, their fight, their everyday life, their families and their political activities.
In the Chateau of Troja with Mr Mireček
Mr Mireček, a physicist a weirdo, a performer and the most intersting member of audience of Prague's alternative theatre and dance scenes (NOD, ALfréd ve dvoře, Ponec). FAMU, Department of Editing (2nd year - documentary film)
Breaking the Circle
Short documentary film about a MSF (Doctors without Borders) mission in Guatemala. The mission deals with sexual violence in the capital.
Kytlice, Zimmer Frei
Kytlice, Zimmer Frei explores the absurd history of Central Europe through the little village of Kytlice in former Sudetenland, situated on the Northern border of the Czech Republic. The film introduces Luděk Farkáš, a naive artist and patient of the local mental clinic, and the film director Rozálie Kohoutová, whose family has bought one of the cottages left after the displaced Germans in the 1950s. The disparate duo of Rozálie and Luděk try to understand the absurdity of nationalism that has left its mark in the region.
Roma Boys, the Love Story
The film explores the taboo subject of homosexuality within the Roma community through the personal story of a Roma activist who happens to be gay. Though his job has earned him respect among his peers, by coming out his status is in jeopardy. However, the desire to share his complex story prompted him to write a screenplay based on his life. Partly a documentary about his autobiographical script, the film switches between documentary and narrative storytelling. Owing to its distinctive style, the film offers a glimpse into the protagonist's world as he faces triple discrimination: as a Roma, as a gay man, and as a gay man in the Roma community.
Czechs in Prague
Various exchange programmes that allow young people to study and live in, among other places, Paris are fairly common these days. However, this film introduces several people who had considerably more trouble getting to France. Publisher of the exile magazine Svědectví Jiří Vrzala and ambassador Pavel Fischer discuss the perception of Czechs in France, and a poll in the streets of Paris reveals that many people don't know much about the Czech Republic... Director Rozálie Kohoutová captured the lives ofseveral generations of Czech emigres.
The Day after a Long Night
Libuše Audrlická, a Czech, Barbara Müller, a Pole, and Inna Klimenko, an Ukrainian, were three women out of a total of 13 million people who were employed as forced labourers under the Third Reich during the Second World War. For the most part, the monotonous work in ammunition factories or in agriculture involved 12-hour shifts in difficult conditions. This was exacerbated by the awareness that their work helped support the hated Nazi regime. In his new film, director Tomáš Kudrna not only focuses on these women's recollections of their life as labourers for a totalitarian system, but also tries to ascertain how these experiences shaped their subsequent fates. While using a large quantity of unique archive material, family photographs and a disturbing musical score, he composes a vivid portrait of the turbulent destinies of three women whose lives were fundamentally affected by wartime events and forced labour in Nazi Germany.
The Sokol from Paris
An ironic sketch, made as an exercise in the first year of the master's programme in the department of documentary film making at FAMU film school in Prague. It follows a ceremony held by the Sokol organisation - the traditional Czech physical education movement - in a French village near Paris. The traditional exercises, including gymnastics and marching, are accompanied by the cooking of traditional Czech food and its mass consumption. The singing of the Czech national anthem, the laying of wreaths on a monument and other ceremonial rituals form a grotesque contrast to the good things cooking in huge pots, the bottles of beer and the remains left on the plates... This investigation of displays of patriotism in a curious place and an obscure context ends in a mass pose by all the participants in the ceremony.
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.
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. Department of documentary film, FAMU - graduate film.
Mr. Mireček
Mr Mirecek, mysterious visit and a little bit of homespun philosophy. Super 8 mm film about loneliness. In colour and with music.
Ladies in White
Damas de Blanco is a film about an unofficial social movement of Cuban women who are under strict surveillance by Castro's regime. Those women are wives, mothers and sisters of political prisoners. Their husbands, fathers or brothers have been imprisoned for years because they in some way expressed their doubts about political leaders and the system in Cuba. In most cases, they signed a petition for more freedom and multi-party system in Cuba, wrote critical newspaper articles etc. At the moment, the movement has some 60 active women members. Regular Sunday mass is the only activity they manage to do together. They organize protest marches on the Avenue in Miramar (a district in La Habana), all dressed in white and carrying pink flowers in their hands. The film depicts 12 most important Damas: their dreams, their fight, their everyday life, their families and their political activities.
In the Chateau of Troja with Mr Mireček
Mr Mireček, a physicist a weirdo, a performer and the most intersting member of audience of Prague's alternative theatre and dance scenes (NOD, ALfréd ve dvoře, Ponec). FAMU, Department of Editing (2nd year - documentary film)
Breaking the Circle
Short documentary film about a MSF (Doctors without Borders) mission in Guatemala. The mission deals with sexual violence in the capital.
Kytlice, Zimmer Frei
Kytlice, Zimmer Frei explores the absurd history of Central Europe through the little village of Kytlice in former Sudetenland, situated on the Northern border of the Czech Republic. The film introduces Luděk Farkáš, a naive artist and patient of the local mental clinic, and the film director Rozálie Kohoutová, whose family has bought one of the cottages left after the displaced Germans in the 1950s. The disparate duo of Rozálie and Luděk try to understand the absurdity of nationalism that has left its mark in the region.
Roma Boys, the Love Story
The film explores the taboo subject of homosexuality within the Roma community through the personal story of a Roma activist who happens to be gay. Though his job has earned him respect among his peers, by coming out his status is in jeopardy. However, the desire to share his complex story prompted him to write a screenplay based on his life. Partly a documentary about his autobiographical script, the film switches between documentary and narrative storytelling. Owing to its distinctive style, the film offers a glimpse into the protagonist's world as he faces triple discrimination: as a Roma, as a gay man, and as a gay man in the Roma community.
Czechs in Prague
Various exchange programmes that allow young people to study and live in, among other places, Paris are fairly common these days. However, this film introduces several people who had considerably more trouble getting to France. Publisher of the exile magazine Svědectví Jiří Vrzala and ambassador Pavel Fischer discuss the perception of Czechs in France, and a poll in the streets of Paris reveals that many people don't know much about the Czech Republic... Director Rozálie Kohoutová captured the lives ofseveral generations of Czech emigres.
The Day after a Long Night
Libuše Audrlická, a Czech, Barbara Müller, a Pole, and Inna Klimenko, an Ukrainian, were three women out of a total of 13 million people who were employed as forced labourers under the Third Reich during the Second World War. For the most part, the monotonous work in ammunition factories or in agriculture involved 12-hour shifts in difficult conditions. This was exacerbated by the awareness that their work helped support the hated Nazi regime. In his new film, director Tomáš Kudrna not only focuses on these women's recollections of their life as labourers for a totalitarian system, but also tries to ascertain how these experiences shaped their subsequent fates. While using a large quantity of unique archive material, family photographs and a disturbing musical score, he composes a vivid portrait of the turbulent destinies of three women whose lives were fundamentally affected by wartime events and forced labour in Nazi Germany.
The Sokol from Paris
An ironic sketch, made as an exercise in the first year of the master's programme in the department of documentary film making at FAMU film school in Prague. It follows a ceremony held by the Sokol organisation - the traditional Czech physical education movement - in a French village near Paris. The traditional exercises, including gymnastics and marching, are accompanied by the cooking of traditional Czech food and its mass consumption. The singing of the Czech national anthem, the laying of wreaths on a monument and other ceremonial rituals form a grotesque contrast to the good things cooking in huge pots, the bottles of beer and the remains left on the plates... This investigation of displays of patriotism in a curious place and an obscure context ends in a mass pose by all the participants in the ceremony.
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.
Exchange Kesaj Tchave
The film tells the story of two teenage girls Jenica and Perla who are friends but live 1500 km apart. They met thanks to the Kesaj Tchave dance organization that brings together Roma children from Eastern Slovakia and children from Romanian Roma families from Paris. During the holiday Jenica and Perla became best pals, partly because during the school year neither of them has many friends. Perla is 14 years old. She grew up in a slum with a purely Roma population in Eastern Slovakia. She goes to a secondary school in the next village. It is a school for Roma children only; white children go to another, better school. Jenica is 17 and she was born in Romania. Her parents took her to Paris when she was seven. Her family lived on the street during the first three years in Paris. She studies at a practical training school to train as a caretaker for seniors. She does not enjoy it but it is the only education available in her situation. When her family lived rough on the street, Jenica did not go to school at all, plus her knowledge of high French and written language is inadequate. This film aims to show two teenage Roma girls from two different communities across Europe as they come of age. Through their eyes we want to see the life of Roma people in today’s Europe but we also want to capture the world of two girls turning into women.
Gene D - Through Darkness to Light
What do you do when your child must avoid sunlight? How do you fight a disorder that can be fatal after exposure to the sun? Porphyria is a rare, virtually unknown genetic disorder that might have contributed to the legend of vampires - mysterious creatures who thrive at night and die in daylight. Yet even some ordinary people suffering from porphyria are also forced to live in darkness.
The film tells the story of two teenage girls Jenica and Perla who are friends but live 1500 km apart. They met thanks to the Kesaj Tchave dance organization that brings together Roma children from Eastern Slovakia and children from Romanian Roma families from Paris. During the holiday Jenica and Perla became best pals, partly because during the school year neither of them has many friends. Perla is 14 years old. She grew up in a slum with a purely Roma population in Eastern Slovakia. She goes to a secondary school in the next village. It is a school for Roma children only; white children go to another, better school. Jenica is 17 and she was born in Romania. Her parents took her to Paris when she was seven. Her family lived on the street during the first three years in Paris. She studies at a practical training school to train as a caretaker for seniors. She does not enjoy it but it is the only education available in her situation. When her family lived rough on the street, Jenica did not go to school at all, plus her knowledge of high French and written language is inadequate. This film aims to show two teenage Roma girls from two different communities across Europe as they come of age. Through their eyes we want to see the life of Roma people in today’s Europe but we also want to capture the world of two girls turning into women.
Gene D - Through Darkness to Light
What do you do when your child must avoid sunlight? How do you fight a disorder that can be fatal after exposure to the sun? Porphyria is a rare, virtually unknown genetic disorder that might have contributed to the legend of vampires - mysterious creatures who thrive at night and die in daylight. Yet even some ordinary people suffering from porphyria are also forced to live in darkness.
Born 1983 in Prague, Evženie graduated in film editing at Film Academy of Performing Arts FAMU. In 2008, she left for study programme at Middlesex University, London. She works in film, video and interactive arts. In 2010 she worked at LUX, motion picture agency and archive based in London. She is the editor of numerous creative documentary films: Never Been Better (2006); Roma Boys (2009); The Day After a Long Night (2011); Kytlice Zimmer Frei (2012), recently finished a film about presidential election in Czech republic Looking for President, directed by Tomáš Kudrna. Cooperated with Czech TV and a number of other production companies, mostly various documentary programmes and formats; also worked with NGO's (People in Need, Médecins Sans Frontières) and art groups (Nanohach). Since 2007, she was an external collaborator with the Institute of Documentary Film at the East European Forum. She is the author of experimental films shot in Super 8mm. Speaks fluent English.
