Docu Talents @KVIFF: psychoanalysis of a city or a Czech atheist in religious Poland

5. 7. 2016

Author: Filip Šebek

Today, a traditional presentation of emerging documentaries being shot in Central and Eastern Europe took place at KVIFF, within the industry programme. Directors and producers of 12 selected feature documentaries presented their projects in 8-minute presentations at the event called Docu Talents @KVIFF, and it was again confirmed, how colourful the region is for documentary artists. Event was organized and curated by the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival in cooperation with the Karlovy Vary IFF.

A director from Slovakia, Pavol Pekarčík, focused in the film Dlhý den on the world of deaf children living at the edge of the society; his method of observation enabled to look closely to the world of four main characters. His compatriot Lucia Nimcová decided to grasp the importance of nationalist songs to wake up populist romantic nationalism in contemporary Ukraine. Her film is named Bajka.

A couple of Czech directors, Karolina Zalabáková and Petr Babinec, offers a view of lives of 5 people in 5 cities with the same unique history. The film Batalives was shot in Zlín, Borov – Croatia, Batanagar – India, Batadorp – Netherlands and Bataypor – Brazil. All the cities were founded by a famous entrepreneur Tomáš Baťa and built according to his unique concept. A young Czech actress and director of documentaries Petra Nesvačilová focuses in her last film Zákon Helena on a police investigator Helena Káhnová, who together with her colleague sent a few dozens of people from so-called Berdych's gang to prison in 90s – Berdych himself included.

A Polish director Ewa Podgórska grasped her piece Diagnoza as an artistic interpretation of the process realized by the first world urban psychoanalyst that sees a city as a human being. The main character of the film Gogita's New Life by a Georgian documentarist Levan Koguashvili is a villager Gogita, who spent 14 years in prison for a robbery and would really like to marry an obese but nice girl, Maka, in spite of his mother's objections.

In his docu-fiction Nine Month War, a Hungarian director Laszlo Csuja offers a portrait of 24-year guy who fights in a Russia-Ucraine war for nine months although he is not a patriot and does not care about politics. An interesting experience is promised by a new project of a Polish artist Piotr Stasik Opera about Poland; this will be a first Polish film project overstepping genre boundaries between opera and documentaries. Music that accompanies documentary pictures and written + spoken word about contemporary Poland will be composed only for this opportunity.

A Russian director Ivan I. Tverdovskiy in the film There will be fog on the roads follows the two most serious Russian problems (according to Nikolai Gogol) – blockheads and roads. Strange ways of their co-existence reflect paradoxes of desperately corrupted society in modern Russia. Another planned Russian documentary is a film of Dmitriy Kalashnikov The Road Movie, composed out of videos shot on an autocamera all over Russia and uploaded on YouTube. The main character of the movie is thus a collective picture of Russian man.

A Romanian documentarist Ionut Piturescu, who got a nomination for Silver Eye prize for his film Quest, presented his planned documentary The self and the other. The main characters are an architect of schools, churches and a producer of traditional cheeses, Todi, and his friend Spiru, a respected economist and one of the most respected Romanian poets in southeastern Europe.

A co-produced documentary of Filip Remunda and Vít Klusák with an expressive title Český Pepík jede do Polska poznat lásku k Bohu shows a summer pilgrimage through Poland to observe a specific situation emerging from the ideas of “Czech ateism and Polish religiousness.” A picture about a co-existence of two nations that are in many aspects close to each other and at the same time so distant, was already presented in 2014 at the Evening of Czech documentary organized by IDF. This year the event will again take place on September 27 in Světozor cinema in Prague and we'll be happy to welcome all people interested in Czech documentary films.

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