Martin Mareček

A carefully composed observation of two newsrooms which, in March 2017, were avidly chasing after information about the Czech president’s decision whether or not to run for re-election. Two teams of reporters, one extraordinary event, and two takes on one "objective" piece of news.

“Most prisoners like boxes.” The constrained nature of prisons opens up an infinitude of fantasies and free artistic expression. Environment determines means of expression. A project of confrontation and dialogue with artists from the outside shows radical diff erences and a conspiratory divergence from social norms. This essay on imaginary and physical freedom introduces us to the extreme thoughts of our own boundaries and limitations.

Daniel is a young man. Daniel is a student and a writer. Also Daniel is a pedophile. He is in love and makes no secret of his sexual orientation; even not in front of the parents of his beloved boy. Daniel has never hurt any child. What is the way of the most intimate of feelings in Daniel's and his friends' heart? The film introduces the rises and falls of people living with pedophilia. It portrays Daniel and the Czech community of pedophiles. It narrates a story of forbidden love and a constant struggle to come to terms with oneself and the society.

A surprisingly intimate portrait of how the dream of running one’s own business can take on monstrous contours. Managed by the father of one of the singers, over the course of five years the girl band 5Angels had reached the gates of pop fame. But it is a path paved not only with the songs of Michal David, but also with the dogged determination of a man who loses any notion of where his role as manager ends and his role as parent begins. An emotionally moved Karel Gott, five angelic girls, and one overly involved father, thanks to whom the behind-the-scenes pre-Christmas atmosphere melts away just as rapidly as the fat should disappear from the belly. “A singer can’t be a lard bucket!”

A documentary survey of urban night life and insomnia. Following several characters who inhabit the dark world of 24-hour bars, slot machine dives, night clubs and casinos, this film offers a glimpse into the world of people who live in an eternal night.

Prague faces the challenge of a new zoning plan. The city's development leads to conflicts between the private developer lobby, city residents, and elected officials. By following several years of town council meetings, the film paints an image of a public policy apparatus that ignores the role of the urban planner. Using a journalistic approach, the filmmaker attempts to depict all points of view, although in the end the dominant perspective is of those who believe in the city as an expression of culture and quality of life.

This documentary takes us to Zambia, a country with significant copper reserves. The state used to mine and sell copper itself. Then its price fell and the mines were forced to privatize in favor of Western multinational companies. While the proceeds used to finance schools, healthcare, and infrastructure, today all the money leaves the country, including generous subsidies from the European Investment Bank. Czech documentary filmmaker Ivo Bystřičan and cameraman Jiří Málek come to see what the situation, which seems to be taken straight out of the daily news in the Western world, really looks like. We are used to looking at the so-called Third World through the eyes of passionate activists fighting poverty and all kinds of humanitarian organizations. The Copper Age, on the other hand, soberly shows that we should be more interested in what this "selfless" aid looks like in practice.

The desire to achieve the greatest physical strength and moments of complete lack of mental strength define the life of film critic Kamil Fila during the filming of this atypical time-lapse documentary. The necessary moment of observation is broken in a longer period of time by the protagonist’s attempts to bring his life into harmony with the people closest to him, which, nevertheless, regularly lead to failure. The result is a portrait of an intellectual at his wits’ end, a man who struggles with the limits of rationalisation. It is precisely the openness with which Fila lets us peer into the depths of his private life that has a therapeutic effect not only for him but also for the viewer.

In 2006, Milan and Tomas electrified a school campus and a hospital in a detached Zambian village. After four years, they return for the last time to find out about their system's failures, repair it and hand it over at last. The film follows them through chaotic days as well as pitch black nights and provides a fresh insight into the pitfalls of humanitarian development projects. Short circuits of all sorts, blending and dissolving of different worlds, rituals of gratitude and concepts of solutions. With no attempts to declare or evaluate anything, Solar Eclipse becomes a situation probe examining various forms of light and darkness. Will the two Czech linkboys succeed in lighting up the Zambian bushland?

A documentary about Olomouc bus driver Roman Smetana, who took on injustice, corruption, and Czech politics’ bad taste armed with a permanent marker. On election posters, Smetana drew antennae on politicians’ heads and wrote that they were liars, thieves, and corruptionists. One of his colleagues turned him in. The judge who tried him was the wife of one of the defaced politicians. After all, he damaged private property! Smetana paid his 15,000-crown fine, but refused to do community service. There is nothing to reform, he said before the court. He got 100 days of hard time. President Klaus refused to pardon him. The filmmakers could not just film his story – they bought spray paint and headed out into the streets. A film about the conflict between law and justice. Does freedom of speech trump property damage? Does there come a point when we must go against social norms? Can a bus driver debate a prime minister?

Father and son Vít and Grisha travel to Russia to visit the boy’s mother and sister. Why did their previously harmonious family split in two? A documentary road movie about the distance between two Slavic countries, the difficulties of fatherhood and puberty, and the alienation between people who should, in theory, be the closest of all.

A film of many styles, combining a documentary with animation, jazzing up the time principle by provoking situations, tells a personal story of the director-biker as well as the journey of Auto*Mat initiative from poetic demonstrations against cars to constructive component of a living civic society.

Activism, direct observation, and situational documentary inconspicuously linger about the constantly delayed construction of the D8 motorway. Local residents, a Brno-based activist and the construction chief shatter the clichés of contemporary documentary film - among other things in who we should root for. The local mixes with the global just like economics and the environment.

As if directing a science-fiction film, Johana Ožvold dissects the story of electronic music. From the pioneer sound engineers working behind the Iron Curtain, through the French avant-garde composers, up to the post-modern creators of digital sonic artefacts, the first-time filmmaker summons an abstract landscape that is haunting and yet achingly beautiful. A voice appears from old television screens forgotten in the maze of some futuristic archive where past and future seem to coexist in a complex and multi-layered way.