Ivan Acher

“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.

Trapped in an abusive marriage, a wealthy German prince desperately seeks a way out. But what appears to be the road to salvation soon turns into a highway to hell. The universal language of music meets the international language of Esperanto in this debut opera by Ivan Acher. The carpenter, forest worker, designer and composer has cleverly blended electro-acoustic and contemporary music to breathe life into Ladislav Klíma’s expressionist novel, The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch.

This existential drama depicts a godless and stressed family whose members do not live happy lives. A household without joy and pervaded by nervousness, dissatisfaction, and frustration creates an oppressive atmosphere. Everyone hides their desires and dreams within themselves. Unexpectedly, a bigoted grandmother visits this family and begins to "save" them. The mother, father, and teenage daughter are exposed to her criticism on a daily basis, and the grandmother's idea of redemption is forcefully imposed on them. The family undergoes a forced transformation, especially when apparent miracles begin to happen. However, this process increasingly repels the granddaughter, who is experiencing her own adolescent problems, and her clash with her grandmother ends in tragedy.

Amidst today’s urban jungle of concrete, glass and metal, it is easy to forget that we actually live in the territory formerly dominated by wildlife. Many of its members have been exterminated by humans, while others have fled the sprawling urbanization to the surrounding countryside. It is their survival strategies that get revealed in exciting detail in the documentary series, Planet Czechia. For two years, a team of camera operators headed by Jan Hošek were recording a life cycle of Prague’s wild animal world across all seasons of the year. The film, accompanied by the commentary read by the actor Jiří Macháček, registers everyday struggles of the fat dormouse, the mouflon, blackbirds or the water hen, teaching the viewers in a casual manner a higher degree of tolerance toward the city’s overlooked inhabitants.

Returning to their ancestral lands, descendants of a formerly aristocratic family hunt for mythical creatures that occupy the nearby wilderness.