Translucent Beings: Vít Klusák and Filip Remunda

A giant car factory now stands where premium-quality cabbage used to be grown. The drastic impact on the landscape was accompanied by an equally painful split in society. Not every inhabitant of the small Silesian village welcomed the arrival of the Asian car factory with open arms. The very sale of the land on which the modern complex was to be built stirred up bad blood in the peaceful village. A documentary about the grim but also cheerful consequences of globalisation reveals what also lies behind the attractive facade of promotional videos and marketing phrases. And it raises the question of whether the good of the world and the place where we live is always really taken into consideration. “I don't programmatically cultivate expectations. Because when I go to a place and meet real, concrete people, what I have imagined always changes fundamentally.” Source: Proti šedi

The search for a woman who has something to say in a giant apartment building that the whole block can fit into. This experimental episode does without a central female figure. We will ascend to the stars on an imaginary cosmic ladder, meeting women and men along the way in a shared space unparalleled in the Czech Republic.“The approach to the protagonists of our show was mostly determined by their characters.” Source: Deník.cz

Helena Třeštíková has been collecting material for her time-lapse films for many years. The documentary programme dedicated to her was filmed over two days. One of the most successful Czech filmmakers is confronted with the limits of her own creative method and the fate of a female intellectual as a public figure. “Jan Burian blamed me for not intervening, but at the same time for helping Marcela, for example, to find a job. These are contradictory accusations.” Source: Respekt

Woman as cultural property in show business, which has no fixed boundaries or forms. This is how one might characterize the theme of this episode of Burian's Women's Day, dedicated to a singer with an unprecedented imagination and a remarkable fate in life. This is accompanied by the recognition that words are sometimes not enough in the communication of two passing speakers. “In that case, the aim wasn’t to inform about the life and work of our heroines or to advertise them, but rather to ask them a seemingly simple question: Why do you do what you do in the way that you do it?” Source: Radio Servis

At the beginning of the millennium, a film reality show about a non-existent hypermarket suddenly placed the names Remunda and Klusák into the wider public consciousness. Czech Dream, the title of the film, is also the name that both directors and actors chose for the shopping mall that appears in it. We as viewers go with them through the process of creating the brand and its image. This “hollow image”, essentially a perfect simulacrum, is an apt symbol of consumer culture. It is not only goods that are marketable, but also our desires, ideas, wishes and dreams. The only question is what we are willing to go through to get anything, preferably at a discounted price. “We wanted to respond to this historical period we’re living in and make a film that puts a smile on the audience’s face that soon turns to a frown.” Source: iDNES

The first direct presidential election marked a turning point for Czech society in several ways. For the first time, a majority of all participating voters decided on who would fill a high-ranking government post. However, the confrontational nature of the open clash of personalities also brought with it unprecedented excesses in the media and public arena. This basically observational documentary presents moments that mostly escaped the attention of ubiquitous journalists. Miloš Zeman smokes wherever he pleases, Karel Schwarzenberg has trouble articulating, and supporters of both parties race to praise the best candidate, whom they express support for in various ways. “While watching the competing documentary President Wanted, we realized that it's not really a behind-the-scenes film at all, because these people behave the same way behind the scenes as they do in front of the cameras.” Source: Aktuálně Magazine

On the night of New Year's Eve, which continued into the New Year 2012, a young Romani man died in Tanvald. He was shot by a white fellow citizen in alleged self-defence under circumstances that remain unclear to this day. The events preceding the fatal encounter, as well as its bleak aftermath, are revealed in a documentary that goes straight to the heart of Czech racism. In a city gripped by noticeable economic and social problems, the edges of coexistence between Roma and white residents are sharpening. And instead of mourning the loss of human life, unveiled calls emerge for new-age segregation or even the elimination of “inadaptables”. “The consequences of the absence of association are evident in Tanvald in the strict division of the town into Roma and the white majority.” Source: Romea

This documentary portrait of Andrej Babiš presents to us a volatile personality without an anchor, a dilettante master of populism and a straightforward drive to gain power regardless of the consequences. The Babiš matrix is revealed to the audience at the time of the local elections, as a “politician in spite of himself” hands out doughnuts to voters to convince them of his good intentions and desire to do the common good. The observational documentary, without any significant controversy, offers a glimpse into the mechanics of Babiš's power politics through the details of handshakes, fleetingly exchanged words, or stacks of sausages made by his own company. “I had hoped that Andrej Babiš would be much more open, unbiased, and curious about an outside perspective, judging by how often he likes to display the fact that he’s not a politician, but that has not been the case. For most of the filming, he treated us like annoying pests.” Source: iDNES.cz

Hundreds of thousands of Czech men and women who travel to the seaside in Croatia every year not only shed their clothing, but also their cultural mimicry on the country’s beaches. From distinct and close encounters between Czech and Croatian people comes a documentary about the human need for the sea, saving money at all costs, and returning to the same places. This peculiar ethnographic study sparkles with tragicomedy at the moments when it most consistently applies the techniques of participant observation. Seen through Croatian eyes, it seems that Czech people truly can be recognised by the socks in their sandals, the pâté and beer in their bags, but perhaps also by their humour, which is something the locals lack. “I realized that even though millions of us go to Croatia every summer, most of us have no idea how popular we are with the Croatians.” Source: Lidovky

This documentary study of the mechanisms that turn the gears of the tabloids is conducted by the unique figure Pavel Novotný. This editor-in-chief of one of the most widely read Czech media outlets of the time, providing news from the world of show business and human misfortune, gets straight to the point. Readership is a fetish, an absolute alibi for all invasions of privacy and every transgression of good ethics. Seen up close, the whole cluster of disreputable reports looks like a staged tableau. Before the eager eyes of an anxious public, celebrities willingly or unwillingly perform acts that the scrutiny of the all-powerful tabloid workers attributes racy significance to. “Ordinary people with difficult lives are calmed by the tabloids when they see that the elite and the rich also have their own misfortunes, debts and illnesses.”Source: Czech Radio

Military education disappeared from the Czech school curriculum with the fall of the communist regime, when it seemed that the “end of history” would bring eternal peace. Renewed interest in systemic preparation for a state of war can be linked to the deteriorating international political situation. But a role is also played by nostalgia for the good old days of clarity and cries that warn of a masculinity crisis in a world without clear contours. In this observational documentary, we’ll learn about the ideas held by the popularisers of modern military education and the conditions and intellectual milieu in which war education is already taking place today. “The word 'war' is slowly but surely entering the public debate and is doing so coyly, and we are all the more innocently becoming accustomed to it.” Source: Dok.revue

At the end of the first decade of the Czech Republic, a great argument broke out concerning the planned American radar base in Brdy. The government hired a lobbyist to explain to ordinary people why we needed this facility in our country and how we would benefit from it. The inhabitants of the neighbouring villages rebelled against the plan and, according to published surveys, most Czech citizens were not enthusiastic about the idea either. This documentary tragicomedy presents a picture of our public debate 20 years after the Velvet Revolution. The clash of two opposing positions remains a sign of a functioning democracy and free society. “Film should contribute to harmony and not overwhelm the world with a sense of powerlessness. Film shouldn’t make anyone feel sick.” Source: Czech Television

The meeting of five former lay jurors of the Czech Joy section of Ji.hlava IDFF with five directors gives rise to a playful documentary portrait of a place, its people and a whole lot of films. The dialogue they have with each other mirrors the events at the festival throughout its duration and gives a concrete face and voice to the main actors in this celebration of documentary filmmaking. Moreover, the customary roles are momentarily reversed and the perspective is refreshingly changed. The audience directs and the filmmakers become actors in the short films/confessions that are being shot as they talk about their creative method, their current and future plans, or their worldviews. “It's no secret that every second documentary beats Czech feature films hands down in terms of the choice of themes and the intensity with which they’re handled.” Source: Czech Television

A trip from America to the Czech Republic and beyond can also be a journey in search of freedom of the imagination and spirit. Hilary and Chris left their native USA, even learned decent Czech, and are living out their dream, filled with work and music, at the end of the millennium in Tábor. That is, until they decide to move again… “It's important for us to see the following life of the film and know what the audience is thinking.” Source: Radio Servis

The pun in the Czech title of the film may be a metaphor for the relationship that Klusák's biological father, Emil Viklický, has with his son. Without the possibility of filming with him directly, the filmmaker seeks other ways to create a portrait of an individual who is crucial to him. This is perhaps the first ever reconstruction of a father figure in absentia. “Klusák is exploring different ways to find out as much as he can about his father. A money order written in Viklický's hand undergoes graphological analysis, trash reveals his eating habits…” Source: 25fps.cz

Investigative journalist Saša Uhlová decided to map the conditions in which people in demanding and menial jobs work in Europe. She travels to Germany, Ireland and France and goes undercover in jobs that the locals usually don't want to do. Whether it's working on a farm, in a hotel or in social services, in all cases she quickly finds herself drained both physically and mentally. In her documentary diary, she draws the invisible boundaries that separate a livelihood earned under dignified conditions from slave labour with scant prospects for improvements in salary and living standard. “In a very general sense, you could say it's a film about human dignity, about caring and about what work is in the broadest sense of the word.” Source: Refresher

The Czech Republic and Poland share an almost 800-kilometre-long border. However, the inhabitants of the two countries differ fundamentally in their approach to faith. While the Czech nation is considered to be one of the most atheistic in Europe and perhaps beyond it, the Catholic Church plays a significant role for our neighbours to the north. This remarkable meta-documentary tells the story of a film being shot in Poland, during which director Karel Žalud searches for God in various manifestations of religious life. An anthropological study focusing on the defective consequences of blindly applied faith gradually becomes a very personal journey into the depths of the director’s own convictions about spiritual life. “There is an old Jewish proverb: ‘Man thinks and God laughs’.” Source: Czech Television

Trumpet player Laco Déczi, saxophonist Ľubomír Tamaškovič and double bassist Ján Jankeje fled Bolshevik Czechoslovakia to pursue their common passion – jazz music. Their remarkable journeys and often turbulent fates are followed in this documentary triple-portrait, which combines recollections of a memorable past with a sometimes almost bleak present. Because fame is, in the words of one of the actors, “so much like a vapour that appears silently and disappears again over a flowing river”. But what remains is the love of music, which set the rhythm of the musicians‘ life and often the direction of their steps, wherever they took them. “In a world with a billion musicians, these three come to the fore. They appear in the absurdity, humour, tragedy and paradox of their lives as if they were swimming in a great river.” Source: Dok.revue

A retired teacher from Blšany traces the steps of his grandfather, a Czech legionnaire. Sporting a tracksuit and wearing a helmet, he’s reminiscent of a Soviet-era cosmonaut. On his long journey from Moscow to distant Novosibirsk, he passes through a Russia that has changed much in more than a century, yet in some ways remains the same. Among other things, he discovers new facts about the harrowing story of the legendary Czech legionnaires. He meets Russian soldiers who aren’t exactly in a hurry to join in the war. And, almost everywhere, he encounters the remnants of totalitarian thinking and imperial sentiments, which are no longer bound by the doctrine of socialism but fed by a capitalism that is whittled down to its core. “Wandering satisfies his personal search for the fate of his ancestor, and at the same time it is a mediated view of the Russian situation through Czech eyes.” Source: Dok.revue

The Covid-19 pandemic hit Czech society hard between 2020 and 2022. Pervasive restrictions trapped us at home for weeks and months, people died by the thousands, and the overburdened healthcare system ran at full speed. The course of the world seemed, in the words of Karel Vachek, to stop for a moment, and we held our breath for what would happen next. A documentary depiction of the greatest global catastrophe in ages is dedicated to the moments that changed everything irrevocably. Together with the three main actors, we are reminded of how fragile our personal and social lives can be when faced with the “big nothing” of a malignant disease. “Vít did The Great Nothing for a while on his own, and then I stepped in. We were like two rocks crunching against each other, and maybe that's why our film has a spark.” Source: Deník N

Thirty-seven-year-old Dalibor lives with his mother and works as an industrial painter. In his spare time, he makes bizarre internet videos in which he vents his neo-Nazi beliefs. For him, the ideology of the radical right is mainly a palette of phrases, images and outcries, and his skinhead appearance is a mask behind which he hides his fear and position as an outcast. This absurd portrait of a personality irresistibly drawn to the camera lens utilises the modern obsession with self-presentation. According to Dalibor, the world should be pure and beautifully transparent. Instead, it resembles his drab room, where he sleeps on a not-so-comfortable couch. “Some of the footage was created using the so-called documentary reconstruction method. Every time we went back to Prostějov, we first interviewed our protagonists about what new things had happened in their lives and what they thought should be in a film about them.” Source: Czech Television

The village of Blšany can be seen as a monument to the 1990s, to the hopes and disillusionment of the post-socialist era. A large football stadium was built here, where the local club played professional-league matches while the small school in the village was threatened with closure due to the small number of pupils. People here sometimes longed for a return to the days of state-enforced joint activities. “We've opened up our genre, which is neither reporting nor feature film, and it can be a playful, weird, realistic experience.” Source: Czech Radio