Klára Tasovská

A country awakens from a deep winter sleep. An incomprehensible and absurd world slowly unfolds before the camera, imbued with strangeness, even though we are familiar with its sounds, rhythms and colours.

Deep breath, experiences that dig even deeper, and dark ambient as their companion. Inspired by Bardo, the Tibetan name for the liminal state between death and rebirth, Viera Čákanyová embarks on a fascinating introspective journey towards darkness. Through generative animation, she sets matter and thoughts into motion. In the end, returning to reality may be the greatest challenge.

Gottland provides an unconventional look at Czechoslovak 20th century history. Inspired by the bestselling book “Gottland” from the Polish journalist Mariusz Szczygiel, this feature-length film is comprised of short stories portraying peculiar fates. Young documentary film makers from renowned Prague Film School FAMU, inspired by the book, take a closer look at the history of post-war Czechoslovakia and Czech Republic, in order to discover new heroes and remind us of the ones that were forgotten or erased from the history.

This Czech documentary presents a visit to the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (a.k.a. Trans-Dniestr) as a trip to a museum of communist totalitarianism. The country, whose independence has been recognized by only a few other states, remains an isolated multi-ethnic enclave held together by an authoritarian regime. In a country where you are only allowed to film out the window of a train, the locals are afraid of being denounced but are glad to live in a comfortable refuge from the hectic modern world, and songs on television celebrate the president.

A prominent Czech journalist Saša Uhlová leaves her family and joins “cheap labour force” in Western Europe. Undercover, she works at an asparagus farm in Germany, tries her hand as a maid at a hotel in Ireland and takes care of the elderly in France. She experiences first-hand the struggles of Eastern European low-wage workers whose sacrifice and hard work allow for the Western society’s comfort. What is the real price that Europe pays for exploiting its own citizens? How do the lives of economic migrants, who have been forced to leave their children and elderly parents, look like? And why are privileged Europeans looking the other way?

After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Libuše Jarcovjáková, a young female photographer, strives to break free from the constraints of Czechoslovak normalization and embarks on a wild journey towards freedom, capturing her experiences on thousands of subjective photographs.

They are 19 years old, lead normal teenage lives, and attend the same school in a small Czech border town. The film portrays Teo, Renata, Anicka, and Nikola at a time when looming adulthood is beginning to cast an anxious shadow over their carefree high school existence. Each of them faces a momentous challenge whose outcome will change their life forever.

Scientist Edward O. Wilson has named the coming geological era Eremocene. In her analogue science fiction essay, Viera Čákanyová explores this era of loneliness in dialogue with a virtual alter ego from the future.