Social & External
Commentary (voice)
A film poem. A minimalist reflection on whether inner states are transferable by the film medium. The aim of a Buddhist mindfulness meditation is to clear away thoughts wandering from the past to the present, to be mindfully aware of each present moment. Each unique NOW NOW NOW passing away just like single frames while the camera grab snatches off meters of expensive 35mm material.
The film is an insight into a teacher's soul and a contemplation upon his teaching fate. This portrait of a unique, experimental filmmaker and teacher Martin Čihák takes a look at his teaching methods, his meetings with his students at FAMU and at a park where they work with film, or in his studio.
Confessions of people who have lost their sight during their lives. What are their feelings and how do they view their apparent handicap?
One day in the life of Mr Hrstka, a blue collar worker and occasional pose model at the Prague academy of arts. Through this portrayal of an outsider, Paskaljevic explores the subject of isolation.
A student work by Jiří Menzel, filmed during his second year at the FAMU film school. Views of old Prague and its tenement buildings, symbolizing the obsolete past, alternate with shots of construction sites for new prefabricated apartment buildings. In spite of certain unavoidable propagandistic overtones added by the director, it is notable as the beginning of his search for a “dramaturgy of colors.”
In Vancouver, British Columbia, two teenagers attempt to create a feature length documentary about their lives. The main character James (played by himself) becomes obsessed with the project and is pushed into a more introverted, lonely existence. His best friend Quinn (played by himself) sets out to help him, but is met with the real answer as to why James is keeping himself inside: the rejection of what he thinks is the love of his life. The two of them go their separate ways, with James going deeper into a depression he’s not sure he can escape from.
A documentary film about parachute training in the Voluntary Union of People's Aviation.
In a series of juxtaposed images and sounds, Jaromil Jireš comments on the tragic premature death of thousands as well as their posterity due to the atomic bomb.
2012: Time For Change is a documentary feature that presents ways to transform our unsustainable society into a regenerative planetary culture. This can be achieved through a personal and global change of consciousness and the systemic implementation of ecological design.
Battering, breading, frying – Berta has prepared thousands of schnitzels in her old cast-iron pan over the years. This 83-year-old landlady’s life on the family farm with adjoining guest house in the Upper Palatinate has been marked by constant hard work. A life that her granddaughters Monika and Hannah never wanted to lead. Now, the deeply indebted farm is on the brink of collapse. Despite having an academic background and contrary to her intentions, Monika, in her early thirties, decides to give up her modern life and save the family business. The two women join forces and give themselves a year to sort out the farm’s problems.
Jan Schmidt and Pavel Juráček turn their attention to the problem of Czechoslovakia's unloved cars in this whimsical documentary short.
Comments on the background and popularity of disc jockey "Emperor" Bob Hudson, who bases his shows on the idea that radio is a fantasy.
Acclaimed director Francis Ford Coppola, with the help of a passionate team of film students with a shared dream for the artistic potential of live digital cinema, work towards realising the director's 'Distant Visions' live-cinema experiment.
Sonia Maletzová's documentary film portrait follows the legend of the Czechoslovak music scene, rock keyboardist Marian Varga (1947-2017), at the end of his life, when he was diagnosed with a terminal illness. It captures the great introvert and avid smoker during his last performances, when he slowly began to lose his breath.
Although they look almost identical in black balaclavas, they have arrived at extremely right-wing views along very different paths. For six months Michał Edelman documented the activity of the National-Radical Camp brigade from Łódź ranging from propaganda events including an obligatory barbecue through attempts to disrupt the Gay Parade in Radomsko to the culmination on the Independence Day in 2019 when they marched along the streets of Warsaw. Are the nationalists really a group of friends with clear-cut views only?
Displaying the faces and voices of transgender youth, the documentary short shows the authenticity of queer and trans people living in Toronto, while simultaneously discussing the struggles for self-acceptance that people who do not conform to cisgender and heteronormative ideals of gender face. Andy Nguyen, trans director and film student, captures his trans friends in their natural state on 16mm film shot on a Bolex h16 camera. Accompanied by narration written and recited by Salem Rao, this film represents that trans people exist and this is what we look like. Regardless of the obvious everyday transphobia, trans people find community and uniqueness within each other and themselves.
