Vana: The Biggest Race Is the Life Itself

Artistic endeavour isn’t about competing; even so, applicants still have to be placed in order of merit at the academy’s entrance exams. But how do you assess artistic talent? And what role can art play in today’s world? A layered, observational documentary which presents a portrait of an institution and a light generational statement in one.

A documentary study of the eye and its functions. A compilation of images from various places gives the function of the eye new meanings. It is a tool for instilling fear, the soldier uses it to find his target, and looking into the eye of your executioner can cause him to doubt his actions. What happens when the eye stops looking?

Documentary portrait of Karel Köcher, supposedly the most important communist agent to infiltrate the CIA.

A multi-portrait of the history of post-1989 Czech ideas and sensibilities, centered around left-wing Christian philosopher Karel Floss. Circling his ideas on God, truth, and politics like satellites are statements by strongly antithetical individuals including Milan Knížák, Ondřej Slačálek, Noam Chomsky, and Czech nationalist thinkers. Working with a subtle sense of irony, the film is openly inspired by the style of Karel Vachek as it makes use of semantic counterpoints, situational humor and aloof formal elements. The result is a kind of audiovisual riverbed for channeling the fury of a nation that recalls a child that is just learning to think and does not know what to relate to first, because in a certain sense, basically “everyone is right”.

The five-year relationship between older Michal and Veronika has reached a crossroads. While he is already planning children and a family, she feels that she has not experienced anything yet and wants to have fun. They live side by side without really being together. Under pressure from arguments and fear of breaking up, Michal comes up with a mysterious vacation for Veronika. From the beginning, however, everything is different from what the meticulous Michal had planned, and Veronika shows her disappointment. The trip through Scandinavia and the situations it puts them in hold up a mirror to themselves and their relationship. Everything seems to confirm that they should no longer be together. An encounter with Šimon, an adventurer and petty thief who is always on the road, gives their lives and their relationship an unexpected reflection and moves them forward.