Vít Poláček

Malaria 1983 is an immersive documentary video game where the player takes the role of a tropical parasitologist on a dangerous mission in the post genocide Cambodia. The interactive story is closely based on the autobiographical book "To Heal, To Survive" (Léčit a přežít) and personal diaries of Dr. Michal Giboda. The player is hurled into a twisted Cold War world of cruel political schemes, post-colonial cynicism and swarms of malaria infected mosquitoes. The task is to face the upcoming challenges through reason and scientific method. You have limited resources, mental energy and you will have to compromise. Will you help the infected patients at the local field hospital where all the former doctors have been executed or will you prioritize your long-term research? Despite being a part of historical events and political shifts, you never get to see the grand picture of things. What you understand with confidence is the internal perspective, the microcosmos of blood and other bodily fluids is what you focus on every day. Your closest companions are petri dish, centrifuge and an old microscope. However, without having the right political connections and profile, your research will hardly ever get published, or at least not under your name and credit.

Presenting history of the 20th century, Comfortable century is a narrative from the point of view of a unique set of Pilsner interiors. Designed by Adolf Loos, these flats witnessed both ordinary episodes from their residents‘ private lives and significant milestones of our modern history, having had impact on Adolf Loos himself as well as on global architecture development. The film uses current language inspired by the documentary tradition, connecting it with visual art procedures to create a compact aggregate of our history. Using video mapping technique, freshly recalled memories from temporary shots are getting back to their original places, installing in the flats and openings here and there.

The film starts with Alfred Wetzler on his way to Frankfurt in 1964 to give a testimony at the Auschwitz Prozess, the biggest German trial of Nazi war criminals. His aim is to help convict ex-SS guards Wilhelm Boger and Oswald Kaduk of mass murder. He is a valuable witness due to the fact that he is one of the authors of the Auschwitz Protocol, a historical 40-page document that broke the story of the Nazi extermination machinery to the world. After introducing Wetzler's story we go back in time to 1944 to describe the escape and what motivated it. Wetzler was a member of the camp resistance and when its leadership found out that soon a million Hungarian Jews were to be deported, they decided someone should escape the camp to warn the Allies and get them to bomb the camp. Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba were chosen as the best candidates to complete what was seen as a suicide mission. Yet, against all odds they succeeded and endured unimaginable hardships on their way to Slovakia. Afterwards they wrote the report which received worldwide attention, but was labelled a hoax by the Nazis and even on the Allied side was considered a gross “Jewish” exaggeration. This meant the camp was never bombed, a fact that haunted Vrba and Wetzler for the rest of their lives. We then examine the post-war period of Wetzler's life. In 1950 he is implicated in an antisemitic trial and narrowly avoids another imprisonment. Afterwards he is considered an enemy of the state and faces persecution. In the 1960s his situation improves, he writes his groundbreaking Auschwitz memoir, and fights for justice for the victims. This is when we return to Wetzler's testimony at the trial, which is hugely traumatic especially as many of the criminals escape punishment. In the 1970s and 80s Wetzler is once again persecuted and under surveillance of the secret service. All mentions of him are suppressed, and he withdraws from society out of fear for his family. In 1988 he dies in obscurity in Bratislava.