Ji.hlava IDFF

[Holdrüholoheuho]

Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival

is a film festival dedicated to documentary and experimental films...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihlava_I ... m_Festival

taking place (annually at the end of October) in the city of Jihlava...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihlava

web...
https://www.ji-hlava.com/
yt...
https://www.youtube.com/user/JihlavaIDFF/videos

[Holdrüholoheuho]

i was there twice so far...
1/
in 2013, when Craig Baldwin was showing his films and giving masterclass there.
https://youtu.be/RZglWJg4nD8
2/
and in 2018, when the main attraction was the masterclass and films of Gustav Deutsch and the experimental film competition won Richard Tuohy.
Jihlava IDFF trailer 2018 (by "guess whom")...
https://youtu.be/V_Sg31zxf38

[Holdrüholoheuho]

Jihlava IDFF trailer 2020 (by Mike Hoolboom)...
https://youtu.be/JVN23PWQcc0

[Holymanm]

Showing off that you're from a cool place? But looks cool!

How is it in terms of English-friendly content (English-language movies or else ones with English subtitles)? Not asking as a North American barbarian who expects the world to accommodate my native language; just wondering

[Holdrüholoheuho]

Showing off that you're from a cool place?

i made the advent in a different part of Bohemia and i am not going to Jihlava this year, but (reading regularly Bure's posts from VIFF) i was tempted to start the thread to remind myself i should go again (sooner than later). otherwise, Gustav Mahler lived in Jihlava so it can't be a bad place! https://jihlava.cz/en/vismo/osnova.asp? ... 55&p1=2755

How is it in terms of English-friendly content (English-language movies or else ones with English subtitles)?

in 2018, i was there with Eva-of-various-names (mentioned in "History of SCFZ" thread) who doesn't speak Czech (she is fluent in English) and i guess she didn't regret being there. the festival is very English-friendly with either subs, or live translation into the borrowed headphones. i don't remember if 100 percent of films are treated this way, but for sure the vast majority of the program (no less than 95 percent). all the intro speeches and alike also translated.

wiki: The 2018 festival was attended by over 40,000 visitors from over 80 countries.

which almost sounds like a barnumesque exaggeration, but... why not?

[Holdrüholoheuho]

and whoever gets bored/frustrated/disappointed with festival films, he/she can get lost in the city's extensive (25 km long) system of underground corridors...
https://www.vysocina.eu/en/top-attracti ... und-system#

DID YOU KNOW…
that in 1978, amateur speleologists discovered a glowing corridor here? The walls of the corridor are covered in a white film that luminesces in green after exposure to light.

[Mauries]

It was on my list of festivals to visit this year, but well...
Hopefully next year, they have an interesting short film selection!

[Holdrüholoheuho]

It was on my list of festivals to visit this year, but well...
Hopefully next year, they have an interesting short film selection!

cool! if you will go, let me know.
i have no clue myself if i will go next year or not, but we might meet there ultimately.

[Holymanm]

Bohemia

Mahler

English-friendly

underground corridors

well i'm sold! it's certainly on my list now, and i had actually been planning on trying to be around that area, around that time, next year... all things allowing

[Holdrüholoheuho]

i had actually been planning on trying to be around that area, around that time, next year

cool! seems like this thread will be very useful next year to negotiate the details

[Holdrüholoheuho]

https://www.ji-hlava.com/novinky/ji-hla ... filmu-doma

The online festival will take place on October 27 – November 8, 2020.
Upon the start of the festival you will receive an e-mail with access information to the exclusive part of our website. Each day, we will publish festival films in the form of online streams available for:
1/ Unlimited number of views.
2/ Until reaching the limit set by the license holder for selected films.
3/ No more than seven days from the publication of the film.
4/ Streams will be published continuously over the course of the fastival according to a time schedule released before the festival starts.
5/ The festival will take place on October 27 – November 8, 2020.
6/ Access to films online will only be available for registered users in the Czech Republic.
7/ Viewers outside the Czech Republic will be able to watch the film programme using DAFilms.com (2–4 EUR per streaming). More information will be published soon.

https://youtu.be/FXHHPRKbfJ8

[Holdrüholoheuho]

Short Joy
Short Joy is a selection of documentary shorts, with the price for the Best Short Documentary Film.
This time, you’re a part of the jury! Watch all of this year’s nominated films for free on DAFilms from 19 October and pick the winner of the Audience Award. Voting ends on 29 October.

https://www.ji-hlava.com/programove-sekce/kratka-radost
https://dafilms.com/program/863-short-joy-2020
this section of JIDFF can be watched for free even from abroad (tho one has to make an account on DAFilms).

[Holdrüholoheuho]

"Short Joy" watchlist (19/22)...
https://www.ji-hlava.com/programove-sekce/kratka-radost

23/10 (4)
GUESTLIST (Vladimír Turner, 2020)

White. Male. Rich. Have a yacht. Even richer. Have a heliport.

FIRST BIRTHDAY AFTER THE APOCALYPSE (Farah Hasanbegović, 2020)

The various stages of baking a cake to draw the viewer into her own stream of consciousness.

DOGS OF HOME (Daniela Repas, 2020)

The older population stayed while the younger population left. People are like dogs: they never forget their way home.

MANIFEST (Assa Rytter, 2019)

A mother painting her nude daughter. Overcoming shame for one’s own physicality and female sexuality.

24/10 (3)
COMMON LANGUAGE (Volia Chajkouskaya, 2019)

The effort to find a common language, which runs into stormy emotions and the inability to voice honest opinions.

UTUQAQ (Iva Radivojević, 2020)

Crude and bewitchingly beautiful Arctic as a place of magic blending of languages, traditions.

→ post UTUQAQ digression → ARCTIC ANTICS (Ub Iwerks, Burt Gillett, 1930)

Were there ever penguins in the Arctic?
Yes! In 1936, a Norwegian polar explorer named Lars Christensen saw the potential for an Arctic penguin population. He plucked nine king penguins from South Georgia’s beaches and sent them north aboard the SS Neptune. They were settled on the Lofoten islands, where they would be safe from foxes and other land predators. Over the next decade, other species’ of penguin, including macaroni penguins, were also introduced. Their existence in the Arctic was short-lived, and the last time they were spotted was in 1949. No one is sure where they went or whether they managed to reproduce, but for a short time, a beautiful island in the Arctic played host to a small population of penguins.
https://youtu.be/CVvuZ_bwXvQ

→ pre FIELD RESISTANCE digression → HISTORIES OF SIMULATED INTIMACY (Emily Drummer, 2017)

Great obstacles excite great passions; since eros consists not in possession but in wanting, what could stimulate eros more than distance and especially death, itself the ultimate distance?

→ pre FIELD RESISTANCE digression → BEHIND THE TORCHLIGHT (Emily Drummer, 2015)

Emerged out of an academic research project about women movie-theater employees in the inter-war period. Special attention to women ushers, known as “usherettes." blends archival text, clips from the romantic comedy The Good Fairy, a newsreel from an “America’s Most Beautiful Usherette” contest, and super 8 film shot at a movie palace in Flatbush, Brooklyn.
https://vimeo.com/115317552

FIELD RESISTANCE (Emily Drummer, 2019)

Environmental devastation in Iowa. Dystopic vision via microscopic images of plants, footage from university greenhouses, karst sinkholes with primary flora and fauna, or a dilapidated granary.

25/10 (10)
SOLASTALGIA (Eline Kersten, 2020)

Nostalgia refers to the feeling one has of a place they left behind. Solastalgia, on the other hand, refers to the homesickness one has when they are still at home.

EXPERIMENT KATJA (Eléonore De Montesquiou, 2020)

She represents the entire generation of the 1990s, which sees itself as a house with no address or railway tracks leading nowhere.

OUR DAILY WORK (Lucia Chicos, 2019)

When they’re not working, they animatedly discuss religion and hypocrisy, lament during tea that they don’t have onions for sausage, or joke and sing. The method of filming, in which the camera is only a non-intrusive observer, only reinforces the monotony of the actors’ movements and experiences.

THE FALLING STAR (Loïc Malo, 2019)

An inhospitable world of shadows in which supporters and opponents of the Communist monster clash in face to face encounters.

RED TAXI (Unknown, 2020)

In addition to the contact sound of fights, screams, singing, chants of the slogan “Liberate Hong Kong! Revolution of our times!”, and the howls of those who've been beaten, we also hear the conflicting comments of taxi drivers from both sides of the border - Hong Kong and the neighboring mainland Shenzhen.

WORLDS APART (Shin Thandar, 2020)

Violent conflicts broke out between the Muslim Rohingya and the Buddhist majority in Rakhine State.

GREETINGS FROM MYANMAR (Sunniva Sundby, Andreas J. Riiser, 2020)

Unsuspecting tourists enjoy a peaceful holiday as a result of the largest genocide in Asia.

MIDNIGHT KIDS (Maxence Vassilyevitch, 2020)

Young Inuits explore the desolate snowy landscape under the midnight sun and transform their home into a vast playground full of melting glaciers and abandoned ships.

MRS. HAPPY (Nikola Klinger, 2020)

Upon seeing the envelope with my initials, you may well wonder who it is that writes to you. Of course, it is just little me.

HELICONIA (Paula Rodríguez Polanco, 2020)

The story, filled with biblical symbols, stands out with its sensual grainy 8mm images reminiscent of heliconia leaves, plants pollinated by birds.

26/10 (2)
FOR MEN GO BY (Thibault Verneret, Assia Piqueras, 2019)

Over the past fifty years, the Mange-Garri chemical plant has drained more than 30 million tons of toxic sludge into the Mediterranean Sea while producing alumina.

84 (Daniel Santiago Cortés, 2020)

In 1984, Álvaro Ulcué Chocué, a Colombian Catholic priest and indigenous rights activist, was shot dead. Documentary footage and fictional gangsters capture the state of a country dominated by drug cartels and social unrest.

[Holdrüholoheuho]

"Testimonies" watchlist (4/14)...
https://www.ji-hlava.com/programove-sekce/svedectvi

26/10 (1)
HOMECOMING - MARINA ABRAMOVIC AND HER CHILDREN (Boris Miljkovic, 2020)

The artist recalls her tumultuous relationship with her homeland, her parents and her own body, and recapitulates how she crossed the border between states and between creator and audience.

3/11 (1)
THE DILEMMA OF DESIRE (Maria Finitzo, 2020)

Biologist Stacey Dutton, queer activist Coriama, designer Ti Chang, and artist Sophia Wallace point out how cultural, political and religious norms ruled by patriarchal society have led women to suppress their own desire. Each of them tries to demystify the established perception of female sexuality and, thus, end phallic dominance. Because without the equality of pleasure, there can be no equal society.

4/11 (1)
CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY (Justin Pemberton, 2019)

In the more than six hundred pages of his best-selling Capital in the 21st Century, Thomas Piketty explores why the one-sided accumulation of capital leads to increasingly greater social inequalities and the transformation of a democracy into an oligarchy. Director Justin Pemberton has taken this book, rich in graphs, numbers and complex economic terms, and transformed it into an energetic audiovisual lecture.

5/11 (1)
OECONOMIA (Carmen Losmann, 2020)

Why is economic inequality on the rise? Why are both individuals and states increasingly indebted? Why is it that it is the clients who pay the most for bank crises?

[Holdrüholoheuho]

"Fascinations" watchlist (15/20)...
https://www.ji-hlava.com/programove-sekce/fascinace

27/10 (4)
STAY IF YOU CAN / GO IF YOU MUST (Elysa Wendi, 2019)

A portrait film of two female contemporary Hong Kong artists shot over ice and smoke.

THE WHITE BEACH (Sebastian Mez, 2020)

Place which holds an incomprehensible paradox. As if the beauty of the place blinds everyone, no one can see the obvious pollution of it. Or was it just a dream?

TOUCH MEMORY (VIETNAM) (Mike Hoolboom, Joséphine Berthou, 2020)

In the film, two lines depicting Vietnam become blurred. The cinematography of layered images, reinforced by commentary and overlapping texts, in which full visuality and verbal associations are always of political importance.

LAOMEDEIA (Youjin Moon, 2019)

Film follows several non-linear trajectories that are constantly evolving into various different dimensions and revealing new transitional spaces. Elements such as water, birds, and trains accompany the viewer on a dreamlike journey.

28/10 (6)
DEAR DAISY, (Yoshiki Nishimura, 2020)

A story of love and betrayal between man and technology. When smashing the computer into pieces, Am I a brutal murderer?

HOLIDAY IN THE SEA OF SUPREMACY (Roger Horn, 2020)

Rather than the much-desired rest he longed for, the vacation in Spain in 2019 brought images of immigrants being pulled from the sea and protests held by Catalan separatists in Barcelona. In the form of a painful memory, he layers home video shots and found footage.

HUMUS (Antonin De Bemels, 2020)

The filmmaker uses the movements of his own body, interweaving them into abstract shapes that gradually pervade the entire frame.

BEFORE THE COLLAPSE OF MONT BLANC (Jacques Perconte, 2020)

Burning question of whether we happen to be the very last people who will ever have the chance to see Mont Blanc’s summit. A response to dialectical tension between the modern concept of techne and physis.

TRACKED (Cho Seoungho, 2020)

Black-and-white shots of a road with shots of bicycles, manipulated into abstract collages. It goes to the limits of acceleration, the centrifugal force that is geometrically enclosed after a first release, unleashed and unlimited.

SHASHIN NO MA (Tetsuya Maruyama, 2020)

The word 間 (ma) in Japanese expresses the awareness of interval / space, not in the traditional notion of a closed three-dimensional entity, but rather as form and non-form mediated by amplified senses.

30/10 (2)
SHIMMER (Betty Blitz, 2019)

A collage of fragmented shots of an apartment driven by focus on materiality, the play with light and darkness and passion to observe things that are not noticeable at a first glance.

ON THE WAY TO SYRACUSE (Patrick Bokanowski, 2020)

A prosaic record of a trip to the beach presented as a series of captivating, abstract scenes reminiscent of moving impressionist paintings.

7/11 (5)
BAROQUE FEMINA (NR.7-11) (Péter Lichter, 2020)

Adaptation of Márió Nemes Z's poetry book. Dadaist collage on the contemporary Hungarian collective subconscious.

LUNAR DANCES (Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, 2020)

Los Ingrávidos is a Mexican art movement made up of independent audiovisual artists and formed in 2011 in response to the mysterious disappearance of 43 students in Iguala. In their new film that is self-aware of the legacy of ancient myths, the creators show us what it would look like if the moon knew how to dance.

THE DEVIL HAD OTHER PLANS (ACT II) (Guli Silberstein, 2020)

The anxiety experienced during the first months of the covid pandemic turned into a three-act film experiment. Fear and paranoia expressed in the colored version of the zombie horror movie Night of the Living Dead, transformed into an associative stream of abstract images.

WE ARE WITHOUT (S.J. Ramir, 2020)

An unknown entity wanders through a constructed reality to the brink of nothingness - a town in the fog.

ONCE UPON A TIME (Ji-Yoon Park, 2020)

A film poem in which human consciousness intertwines with the element of water. The leitmotif flowing through the entire work is memory, the eternal clash between the urge to look back and the awareness of space and time ahead.

[Holdrüholoheuho]

"Opus Bonum" watchlist (3/10)...
https://www.ji-hlava.com/programove-sekce/opus-bonum

27/10 (1)
ONE SAYS NO (Dayong Zhao, 2020)

Rural residents are forced to vacate their simple dwellings and make room for new houses and entrepreneurs from the cities. The inhuman dimension of the Chinese construction boom, based on immediate testimony from a barricaded apartment.

28/10 (1)
RIFT FINFINNEE (Daniel Kötter, 2020)

Four urbanizing areas, in which the boundaries between urban and rural, between industry and agriculture are blurring. A layered portrait of a place undergoing drastic ecological and social changes - for which many are not prepared.

31/10 (1)
WHITE ON WHITE (Viera Čákanyová, 2020)

Viera Čákanyová’s video diary that she kept while staying at the Polish Antarctic station, where in 2017 she shot the film FREM (2019), whose main character was an artificial neural network. During her stay, the author chats with various artificial intelligences, leading conversations that touch on the nature of film, art, and the meaning of life while also revealing a way of thinking that’s free from humanity and from an emotionality that forces deep introspection. Footage from her routine, everyday life at the station contrasts with lyrical images of the immaculate Antarctic nature.

[Mauries]

I've got an online accreditation - If you come across any European productions of <30min that are worth a watch, please let me know

[Holdrüholoheuho]

European productions of <30min

I will keep it on my mind! and let you know.

[Holdrüholoheuho]

European

btw. somehow i think you are from the Netherlands, but i am not sure if this notion is completely delusional or not?
In "Short Joy" there was a cool film about quarry near Maastricht called SOLASTALGIA...
https://www.ji-hlava.com/filmy/solastalgie

[Holdrüholoheuho]

European productions of <30min

I just finished first two blocks of "Fascinations" and there are 3 films which match the criteria and i consider all of them worth watching...
1/ THE WHITE BEACH (Sebastian Mez, 2020)

Place which holds an incomprehensible paradox. As if the beauty of the place blinds everyone, no one can see the obvious pollution of it. Or was it just a dream?

2/ HUMUS (Antonin De Bemels, 2020)

The filmmaker uses the movements of his own body, interweaving them into abstract shapes that gradually pervade the entire frame.

3/ BEFORE THE COLLAPSE OF MONT BLANC (Jacques Perconte, 2020)

Burning question of whether we happen to be the very last people who will ever have the chance to see Mont Blanc’s summit. A response to dialectical tension between the modern concept of techne and physis.

ad 1/ in THE WHITE BEACH water of the Mediterranean Sea speaks in a whispering voice about its pollution and as i am a person with somewhat pantheistic leanings whenever this happens (natural phenomena articulating) i'm all ears.
ad 2/ someone might consider HUMUS as not much better than watching a screensaver, but i am fond of observing ppl dancing or looking at bodies morphing, so i was enchanted (for me the simple magic worked).
ad 3/ i also have a weakness for the glitch, thus to me watching the glitching of glaciers doesn't seem pointless. Btw. i noticed BEFORE THE COLLAPSE OF MONT BLANC can be watched on Vimeo as well...
https://vimeo.com/416378580
-------
Actually, i overlooked there was one more fitting...
4/ HOLIDAY IN THE SEA OF SUPREMACY (Roger Horn, 2020)

Rather than the much-desired rest he longed for, the vacation in Spain in 2019 brought images of immigrants being pulled from the sea and protests held by Catalan separatists in Barcelona. In the form of a painful memory, he layers home video shots and found footage.

It has its counterpart in GREETINGS FROM MYANMAR (Sunniva Sundby, Andreas J. Riiser, 2020)

Unsuspecting tourists enjoy a peaceful holiday as a result of the largest genocide in Asia.

But i am not much into vacational tourism, so i stayed rather detached while watching both of them.

[Holdrüholoheuho]

many personal memories are associated with places and to destroy those places is like a lobotomy (lociotomy)...
https://letterboxd.com/film/one-says-no/

[Holdrüholoheuho]

Welcome, tormenting thoughts!
Your name, insulted by others.
A stick, hardened in fire!
No one can see what troubles you.
A man's life is one
and so is his death.
Death in front of your eyes,
you would never turn back.
Wayyanee, we will humiliate you!
Oromo is greater, while they are just minor.
We all will, side by side, be cutting their throat.
We could not share secrets.
We could not sleep, nor move.
How could that be?
We never forgot, what happened to us.
You, my beautiful character, my love!
Me, hungry or not, will always find your house.
Over here and over there.
No one can separate us.
https://letterboxd.com/film/rift-finfinnee/

[Mauries]

European

btw. somehow i think you are from the Netherlands, but i am not sure if this notion is completely delusional or not?
In "Short Joy" there was a cool film about quarry near Maastricht called SOLASTALGIA...
https://www.ji-hlava.com/filmy/solastalgie

I'm indeed Dutch. Thanks for the tip! I also grew up in that province in the south - not very close to the mines though, but close enough to visit them with school or parents. Beautiful area, the only area in The Netherlands with some decent hills. The film is from a production company from near Maastricht that I'm actually meeting (digitally) tomorrow

[Holdrüholoheuho]

Beautiful area, the only area in The Netherlands with some decent hills.

When i watched the film i was thinking that the place could be truly worthy of a visit (once the industry will be gone and nature will start taking the area back). Devastation is sometimes so enchanting. Sometimes, the devastation is very close to land art.

Landmark staircase complete
A viewing platform now soars 40 meters above the limestone quarry in Maastricht (NL). And a new staircase down the quarry face that focuses on restoring a culturally significant long-distance foothpath from Maastricht (NL) to Liège (B).

[Holdrüholoheuho]

"Czech Joy" watchlist (4/13)...
https://www.ji-hlava.com/programove-sekce/ceska-radost

28/10 (1)
ATHANOR: THE ALCHEMICAL FURNACE (Adam Oľha, Jan Daňhel, 2020)

Jan Švankmajer’s general thoughts on food, fetishes, and the end of both humankind and Western civilization. This playful, associative and tactile portrait, whose fluctuating form provides an outline of various options, is supplemented with the perspectives of friends and colleagues. Just as in alchemy, this film is based on three mutually interconnected principles. Specifically, these were Jan Švankmajer, Jaromír Kallista and Eva Švankmajerová. Another very important element was the Surrealist Group, which is Švankmajer’s second family.

29/10 (2)
TRACES OF A LANDSCAPE (Petr Záruba, 2020)

An immersive watercolour of the life of artist Jan Jedlička. The Czech painter, filmmaker and photographer emigrated to Switzerland in 1968 before making his second home in the desolate landscape of the Tuscan lowlands of Maremma. The empty palette of possibilities of internal exile gradually fills with enchanting paintings woven from a colorful mixture of shades of rocks, sediments, and pigments found in the landscape.

PERSONAL LIFE OF A HOLE (Ondřej Vavrečka, 2020)

Is it at all possible to discover, understand and describe something that is so random and disconnected, so unanchored in space and time, as is the world of today? Rather than looking for fixed points, the filmmaker focused on holes and gaps, on inconsistency and imperfection – in nature, in culture, in love and in work. A lively, stylistically and thematically eclectic collage to explore how emptiness can be pondered.

31/10 (1)
WHITE ON WHITE (Viera Čákanyová, 2020)

Viera Čákanyová’s video diary that she kept while staying at the Polish Antarctic station, where in 2017 she shot the film FREM (2019), whose main character was an artificial neural network. During her stay, the author chats with various artificial intelligences, leading conversations that touch on the nature of film, art, and the meaning of life while also revealing a way of thinking that’s free from humanity and from an emotionality that forces deep introspection. Footage from her routine, everyday life at the station contrasts with lyrical images of the immaculate Antarctic nature.

[Holdrüholoheuho]

According to Jan Švankmajer, the whole mystery of filmmaking dwells in focusing on insignificant details. The traditional cinema vocabulary urges the camera to focus (in big detail) on something significant. Thus if you highlight the pointless, the viewer gets confused, will start to think what's the significance of the (pointless) detail, will start fabricating all kinds of meanings, and (in sum) will get involved in the film (which is the point).
https://letterboxd.com/film/athanor-the ... l-furnace/

[Holdrüholoheuho]

"Conference Fascinations: Poland" watchlist (7/21)...
https://www.ji-hlava.com/programove-sek ... ace-polsko

28/10 (3)
MY CITY (Wojciech Has, 1950)

On the border where dreams and reality collide, every nook and cranny of Krakow springs to life. The city’s appearance may be long gone, but its memory lives on (with the help of the narrator’s Proustian monologue).

HERE AND TEHRE (Andrzej Pawlowski, 1957)

Accompanied by a modernist composition from Adam Walaciński and set within the space of parentheses formed by an expressive portrait of a hand and wildly done-up faces, colourful flashes, smudges and reflections are thrown into the darkness with the help of a projector composed of crumpled-up cellophane, a reflector, and moving lenses.
https://youtu.be/QvtMXxzWkk0

ARTICLE ZERO (Włodzimierz Borowik, 1957)

The voyeuristic footage found from a police station where cops took prostitutes into custody after a night raid in the streets and slums of Warsaw.

3/11 (4)
EROTIQUE (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1960)

In a space made out of newspaper and defined by a mirror’s reflection, a surreal tension is felt between a girl on the run, who daydreams while dusting off a mirror, and a stranger who suddenly emerges from the depths of the space to amuse, frighten, and perhaps even win.

ABC (Janusz Polom, 1974)

The individual letters of the Polish alphabet, carefully pronounced in their phonemic form, gradually parade across a white background. They alternate with the black screen of the oscillograph, which is intersected by a trembling line and whose oscillations represent the phonetic realisation of every letter.

MY FILM (Józef Robakowski, 1974)

The camera, which is usually facing down on a path covered with autumn leaves, shakes with every step the filmmaker takes and the image of the park, dilapidated walls, and overgrown paths it conveys is fragmented and out of focus. The gaze of the camera brightens for just a few seconds when it discovers the next letter.

EXERCISES FOR TWO HANDS (Józef Robakowski, 1976)

Footage shot simultaneously by Robakowski using two cameras attached to his arms play side-by-side on a split-screen.

[Holdrüholoheuho]

"Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz" watchlist (16/16)...
https://www.ji-hlava.com/programove-sek ... xprmntl-cz

29/10 (8)
AFTER THE MAGICIAN (Lea Petříková, 2020)

French-Mexican surrealist artist Alice Rahon made her only film - The Wizard - in 1947, which was lost before its first release. From this came a dream of a never-before-seen work, an encounter with a person who is unjustly forgotten, and an excursion to the landscapes of image, sound and imagination.

CATASTROPHE (Zbyněk Baladrán, 2019)

The film references a one-act play by Samuel Beckett dedicated to the imprisoned Václav Havel. A meditation on media manipulation, for which crime is just a slice of reality killing the plasticity of reality.
https://vimeo.com/358638191

14,4V17.11. (Vladimír Turner, 2020)

Capturing fragments of the celebrations of the anniversary of the Czechoslovak Velvet Revolution. The film, ostensibly a reportage, transforms the event into a vortex that pays homage to avant-garde films from the first half of the 1920s.
https://vimeo.com/374687149

RESONARE DE INTER SOLARIS (Kryštof Brůha, 2020)

This thought experiment, based on Brůha's kinetic sculptures, views time as a landscape. Eerie images of rocks submerged in fog represent an anonymous characterless space. The stone terrain becomes a face into the wrinkles of which time is written as the metaphysical plane of material existence. According to Augustine, time is not just the movement of celestial bodies, but rather an idea, a being, a metaphysical category, an environment.

EDIBLE WATER BOTTLES(Anežka Horová, 2020)

The film examines a situation in which water becomes a luxury commodity and gradually awakens in us the fear of its possible shortage.

DROPLETS (Jitka Cejkova, 2018)

The lifelike behavior of inanimate matter in the form of droplets, allowing us to observe a change in shape or collective behavior.

PHANTOM SKIES (Aleš Zůbek, 2020)

We are in alternative reality which philosophical state is proliferated by invisible authorities and overall shame from being under the reign of natural and cosmic forces. Fast and violent technological developement allows the human to tame the atmospherical phenomenons that schedule his life for thousands of years.

SHORT IMPROVISATION ON WHATEVER JACOB APPELBAUM MEANT WHEN HE WROTE "SELECTOR" (Daniel Burda, 2020)

Young woman confesses from her inner trauma and fears from surveillance as an experience of her movement through the city.

7/11 (8)
NOBODY NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT THIS, HE SAID (Ester Grohová, 2020)
SPARKLY SHINY BRIGHTLY SEE, KALEIDOSCOPE GROWS FROM EARS (Klára Ondračková, Tereza Chudáčková, 2020)
MULADHARA (Martina Kostelanská, 2020)
FEVER DREAM (Marina Hendrychová, 2020)
IT'S ME (Tomáš Svoboda, 2019)
SELF-PORTRAIT AS DOUBT (František Fekete, 2020)
DELIMITATION (Tereza Vejvodová, 2020)
A PLACE (Tomáš Rampula, 2020)

[Holdrüholoheuho]

"Fascinations: Jan Jedlička" watchlist (3/3)...
https://www.ji-hlava.com/programove-sek ... n-jedlicka

29/10 (3)
AIR (Jan Jedlička, 2001)
16 SKETCHES OF DIALOGUE (Jan Jedlička, 2002)
THE COOKS (Jan Jedlička, 1999)

i first heard about Jan Jedlička (as a painter) because he was involved (in 1960-1967) in a phenomenon called "Prague Fantastic Realism" (together with Vladivoj Kotyza and Mikuláš Rachlík). After the Warsaw Pact invasion, he went to exile and abandoned "fantastic" (=freaky) to become a more realistic landscape painter. however, i would still call his watercolor landscape paintings "fantastic" (=fabulous).

he was a photographer, filmmaker and painter...


1/ from his filmmaking oeuvre, i became familiar (just now) only with 3 short films (listed above) and i must admit i am not much impressed.
2/ his photographs are more impressive...


3/ but his magic with watercolors and his ability to mix his own pigments from a soil, rock, or mud is truly outstanding...


so, i can't say watching his shorts is a must, but watching a doc about him called TRACES OF A LANDSCAPE (which i watched as a part of "Czech Joy" section) is something i would highly recommend...
https://letterboxd.com/film/traces-of-a-landscape/

Jan Jedlička is one of the best kept secrets in the world of art.

[Holdrüholoheuho]

"Special Event" watchlist (1/3)...
https://www.ji-hlava.com/programove-sek ... ni-uvedeni

29/10 (1)
FIVE HUNDRED PLATEAUS (Andrea Slováková, 2020)

A conceptual experimental film (exploring vertigo effect, rhizomatic perception and thought) partly inspired by the book A Thousand Plateaus by the French philosophers Giles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Genetic elements of plants, animals and people are not so far from each other. Human perception prefers figures and trees as a dominant holder of meaning, but what if there are side-structures, non-hierarchy - and rhizome, which creates core of determination.